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this IS researchAuthor: Nick Berente and Jan Recker
Professors Nick Berente from the University of Notre Dame and Jan Recker from the University of Hamburg talk about current and persistent topics in information systems research, a field that explores how digital technologies change business and society. You can find papers and other materials we discuss in each episode at http://www.janrecker.com/this-is-research-podcast/. Language: en Genres: Business, Management, Science, Social Sciences Contact email: Get it Feed URL: Get it iTunes ID: Get it |
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The dawn of the age of autonomous scholarship
Tuesday, 8 September, 2026
In information systems, we saw the rise of qualitative scholarship in the 1990s. In the 2000s, we saw the rise of analytics in research, fueled by the emergence of big data. In the 2010s, we saw the rise of econometric methods, diff-in-diff designs, and field experiments. What is next? Autonomous scholarship, fueled by AI agents that get infused into research processes. We are the cusp of this new era and are beginning to experiment and trial how research might look like going forward. We discuss a few options for what autonomous scholarship could look like: will AI be a surrogate for humans? Will AI augment humans and lead to new forms of collaborative research? Will AI merely scale research processes? And how would we validate the autonomous components of research processes? We can only speculate but we do know one thing that is certain: exciting times are upon us. References Bichler, M., Xu, H., Zhang, N., Zimmerman, T. (2026). ICIS 2026 Professional Development Workshop (PDW) on Autonomous Scholarship. https://sites.nd.edu/autonomous-workshop/. Chandra Kruse, L., Recker, J., Young, A. (2026). ECIS2027 Call for Submissions. https://ecis2027.uni.lu/call-for-submissions/. Eisenmann, T., Parker, G., & Van Alstyne, M. (2011). Platform Envelopment. Strategic Management Journal, 32(12), 1270–1285. Schätzing, F. (2007). The Swarm: A Novel of the Deep. Hodder Paperbacks. Abbasi, A., Bichler, M., Gopal, M., Karahanna, E., Sarker, S. (2026). ISR Special Issue: Generative AI and New Methods of Inquiry in Information Systems Research. Information Systems Research, https://pubsonline.informs.org/page/isre/calls-for-papers. Gartenberg, C., Hasan, S., Pierce, L., Bail, C., Dai, H., Hauser, O., Rahman, H., Zhang, D. (2026). Special Issue: AI-Enabled Frontiers in Organizational Science. Organization Science, https://pubsonline.informs.org/pb-assets/filesorsc/CFP_AI-Enabled%20Frontiers%20in%20Organizational%20Science-1785685920943.pdf. Lalor, J. P., & Rodriguez, P. (2023). py-irt: A Scalable Item Response Theory Library for Python. INFORMS Journal of Computing, 35(1), 5–13. Pillet, J.-C., Larsen, K. R., Dobolyi, D., Queiroz, M., Handler, A., Arnulf, J. K., & Sharma, R. (2026). AI-Augmented Content Validation in Behavioral Research: Development and Evaluation of the RATER System. MIS Quarterly, 50(1), 59–86. Schmitt, B. H., Hao, S., Pham, M. T., & Hofstetter, R. (2026). Generative Grounded Theory (GGT): Inductive Theory Building in the Age of Generative AI. Journal of Consumer Psychology, https://doi.org/10.1002/jcpy.70036. De Lima Salge, C. A., Karahanna, E., Li, W. (2026). Conference on Generative AI in Research Methods. Atlanta, Georgia, https://sites.google.com/view/2026gaim/home. Glymour, C. (2004). The Automation of Discovery. Daedalus, 133(1), 69–77. Debortoli, S., Müller, O., Junglas, I., & Vom Brocke, J. (2016). Text Mining For Information Systems Researchers: An Annotated Topic Modeling Tutorial. Communications of the Association for Information Systems, 39(7), 110–135. Gao, Y., Lee, D., Burtch, G., & Fazelpour, S. (2025). Take Caution in Using LLMs as Human Surrogates. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 122(24), e2501660122. Ghasemi, H., Astvansh, V., & Sepehri, A. (2026). How Should Content Creators Narrate their Content? The Impact of Emotionality Flips on Audience Engagement. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 54(4), 1080–1100. Berente, N., Seidel, S., & Safadi, H. (2019). Data-Driven Computationally-Intensive Theory Development. Information Systems Research, 30(1), 50–64. Huysman, M. (2026). Studying AI in the Wild: Reflections from the AI@Work Research Group. Journal of Management Studies, 63(2), 315–334.
