Microsoft Word - Vol 15 2 Final.doc Australasian Journal of Information Systems Volume 15 Number 2, 2009 5 ADDENDUM JULY 2008 ERA REPLACES RQF Julie Fisher Caulfield School of Information Technology, Monash University, Victoria, Australia Email: julie.fisher@infotech.monash.edu.au G Shanks Department of Information Systems, Faculty of Science, Melbourne University, Victoria, Australia Email: gshanks@unimelb.edu.au J Lamp School of Information Systems, Faculty of Business and Law, Deakin University, Victoria, Australia Email: john.lamp@deakin.edu.au INTRODUCTION Since this paper was written and published (Fisher, Shanks, & Lamp, 2007) further work has been undertaken on the development of the Australian Information Systems Journal and Conference Rankings list. More details became available late in 2007 on the DEST requirements relating to journal and conference rankings for the RQF. A newly installed Federal Government resulted in the abandonment of the RQF, replaced with ERA (Excellence in Research for Australia). It was therefore appropriate to provide an update of the revised Ranking list and the process undertaken to arrive at the updated list. Although the RQF in its current form has been abandoned, ERA also requires a ranked journal list. DEST requirements During 2007, more information relating to the impending RQF was released. Information Systems was accepted as a separate discipline for the purposes of the RQF and this continues with ERA (Field of Research 0806). The Australian information systems community was required in 2007 to provide DEST with a Journal and Conference Rankings list for the discipline. Furthermore, DEST provided guidelines for the ranking scheme, suggesting that 5% of journals should be ranked A+, 15% should be ranked A, 30% should be ranked B and the rest should be ranked C. Although no hard guidelines were articulated for ERA, ARC officials have since stated that these percentages will stand. Australasian Journal of Information Systems Volume 15 Number 2, 2009 6 2007 ranking activities In order to achieve a reasonable number of A+ journals the overall list needed to be expanded from the original 30. Once the new DEST requirements were known, additional journals were identified for the list. This was done by asking academics in the Australian Information Systems community to nominate journals they thought should be included. Journals from The Index of Information Systems Journals (http://lamp.infosys.deakin.edu.au/journals/) were identified and added, and journals previously excluded were reconsidered. The new list comprised 182 journals. Information on rankings for these journals was compiled and a new ranking developed. Prior to the September 2007 workshop of ACPHIS, the ranking list was circulated to all ACPHIS members for comment and changes to the list were made. ACPHIS Workshop Adelaide 2007 At the ACPHIS 2007 Workshop further discussion of the Ranking list took place. In November 2007 the AIS published what they described as the "Senior Scholars" list which comprised eight journals (http://home.aisnet.org/displaycommon.cfm?an=1&subarticlenbr=378). The group agreed that seven of these journals would be included in our A+ journals, Journal of Strategic Information Systems was left out and Decision Support Systems and Information and Management included. The new list was reviewed and any re-ranking as a result of this review took place by the ACPHIS members, representing the most senior and eminent scholars in the Australian information systems community. The revised version of the list was circulated again to all members of ACPHIS for comment. Further adjustments to the list were made based on this feedback. The list in this addendum is the one that was provided to DEST in November 2007, although for conciseness only journals ranked A+, A and B journals are included. For the purposes of ERA the current list was accepted in 2008 without any adjustment. The full list can be found at www.acphis.org.au. Any changes made as a result of the ERA ranking process will also be reflected on the website. The list will be regularly reviewed and updated and made available through the ACPHIS website. Fisher, J., Shanks, G., & Lamp, J. (2007). A ranking list for information systems journals. Australasian Journal of Information Systems, 14(1), 5-18.