Analyzing information systems researchers' productivity and impacts: A perspective on the H index

Quantitative assessments of researchers' productivity and impacts are crucial for the information systems (IS) discipline. Motivated by its growing popularity and expanding use, we offer a perspective on the h index, which refers to the number of papers a researcher has coauthored with at least h citations each. We studied a partial list of 232 top IS researchers who received doctoral degrees between 1957 and 2003 and chose Google Scholar as the source for our analyses. At the individual level, we attempted to identify some of the most productive, high-impact researchers, as well as those who exhibited impressive paces of productivity. At the institution level, we revealed some institutions with relatively more productive researchers, as well as institutions that had produced more productive researchers. We also analyzed the overall IS community by examining the primary research areas of productive scholars identified by our analyses. We then compared their h index scores with those of top scholars in several related disciplines.