The Information Systems Journal (ISJ) receives a large number of submissions that describe the direct or slightly modified application of well-established theoretical perspectives in new contexts. Regrettably, senior editors reject many of these submissions without sending them out for formal review. This editorial explains why this occurs and describes what might instead constitute a sufficient contribution in such cases.

In 2020, ISJ rendered final decisions on 368 submissions. While ISJ deliberately refrains from setting a hard target for the number of acceptances to allow for the publication of good research, the number of available slots for publication is obviously limited.

Equally important as journal capacity constraints is limited review team resources. Each paper sent out for review requires a senior editor, an associate editor and two or three reviewers. When using the conservative number of two reviewers per paper, 368 final decisions would have required at least 736 reviewers. Finding reviewers with the relevant expertise to review submissions is a painstaking process, as the most qualified reviewers are many times already reviewing other manuscripts for ISJ and/or other journals. Associate editors often need to approach many potential reviewers in order to secure two well-qualified reviewers.

Beyond this, submissions receiving revise and resubmit decisions require significantly longer time commitments. Three rounds of review can easily take 18 months (90 days for the review process and 90 days for the authors to revise the manuscript each round). While these time commitments seem painful at times, they are crucial to a quality review process that helps authors publish the very best version of their work. It is likely that most authors have experienced the frustrating process of multiple rounds of review, only to realise that in the end their work was much improved.

What does all this have to do with submissions that simply apply established theory in a new context? The answer is, a great deal! As an Association of Information Systems (AIS) basket of eight journal, ISJ receives a significant number of high-quality submissions. Editors must make tough choices about which manuscripts to send out for review and which manuscripts to reject directly (i.e., ‘desk reject’). Editorial teams consider many factors during this process. Will the research be of interest to the IS community, and, importantly, to ISJ readers? Does the research build on research previously published in ISJ? Is the research well-motivated? What are the chances of eventual acceptance? Is the theoretical framework appropriate? Are the methods suitable for answering the research question? Does the research provide new insight to an existing body of knowledge or open up a new area of inquiry? A negative answer to the last question is one of the primary reasons why editors frequently reject submissions that merely apply well-established theoretical models in new contexts.

A particularly salient example of well-established theory frequently applied in new contexts is TAM (and its derivatives, such as TAM2, TAM3, UTAUT and UTAUT2). TAM and its related versions are well known; thus, it is relatively straightforward for researchers to apply them in new contexts such as when organisations introduce a new software package to users. This is not to say that conducting this research does not require a great deal of effort. In many cases, it does. Nor does it suggest that the findings are not valuable, especially for the organisation in which the researchers apply the model. In fact, organisations should be interested in applying TAM; they can learn about the acceptance of new technology using a well-established model. However, such applications do not provide scientific insight beyond the knowledge that the model is predictive in a new context.¹¹ There is always the chance that the model may not be predictive in the new context. In that case, it is possible that researchers will discover new insight into TAM’s applicability. Whether this provides a significant theoretical contribution is another question.
Since researchers have repeatedly established TAM's predictive properties, such studies add very little to existing knowledge and thus are unlikely to survive the rigorous ISJ review process.

Other submissions attempt to integrate additional constructs into the different versions of TAM. All too often, however, these submissions include constructs that researchers have previously introduced to this literature. Sometimes, authors appear to add new constructs almost arbitrarily. In cross-sectional survey designs, many perceptual measures will share at least some variance with outcomes such as behavioural intentions. Authors gleefully proclaim that their new model explains additional variance, and, therefore, the inclusion of the new variable is of great importance. What these authors often forget is the motivation for why this new variable is included in the first place. Research involves a tradeoff between explanatory power and parsimony. Although the model may explain slightly more variance, is it worth the tradeoff in parsimony? Do the new variable and related theoretical underpinnings provide new scientific insight? These important questions require more than superficial justification by authors. Given the frequency of ISJ submissions that add variables to established theoretical models, eventual publication of the work is highly unlikely.

So what constitutes a sufficient contribution in such cases? Carter and Bélanger (2005) provide a good example of how to integrate several different theoretical perspectives successfully. Setting the tone for the article, Carter and Bélanger offer a rich motivational discussion on why the integration of trustworthiness, innovation and acceptance factors represents an important step towards better understanding e-government services software acceptance. The authors first describe the four relevant theoretical perspectives, namely, the technology acceptance model, diffusion of innovations, perceived characteristics of innovating and, finally, the concept of trustworthiness. Next, they compare the theoretical mechanisms of these different perspectives and successfully integrate them into a well-justified research model. The authors then validate the measures for each of the constructs and use regression analysis to evaluate the relationships among the measures. Not surprisingly, ISJ lists Carter and Bélanger (2005) as one of its all-time highest cited articles. According to Google Scholar, it is also the top-cited paper for both these authors.

Although this editorial relies on TAM related examples, authors frequently submit work that uses other theories in a similar fashion. Established theories are either directly applied in new contexts, or new variables are added without proper motivation. Neither case provides a contribution to knowledge sufficient for publication in a top-tier journal such as ISJ.

In closing, although rejections are always disappointing, authors can take heart that they are in good company. Close to 90% of all ISJ submissions are rejected. This editorial should help authors decrease their odds of rejection by avoiding the submission of manuscript types that typically result in rejection.

In this issue of the ISJ, we present eight papers.

In the first paper, Amon Rapp (2022) examines a massively multi-player online role-playing game through social practice theory in order to understand how the game time may affect players' engagement. The author shows that, in a video game, time unfolds in multiple temporalities, which are curated and tuned by game designers through the design of certain game design elements, namely the basic design components of a game. These temporalities elicit temporal experiences that stimulate engagement in various ways, by tying players to the shared temporality of the game community, by making them feel fulfilled over the long term and by automatizing their experience of play. The study contributes to IS research by proposing a novel understanding of how time can be intentionally designed to sustain user engagement. Furthermore, it suggests that ‘time design’ in video games could inspire engaging designs in broader IS contexts, such as in the gamification of online communities and crowd working systems.

In the second paper, Eriksson and Ågerfalk (2022) analyse the ontological question of identity, focussing specifically on institutional identity, which is the identity of socially constructed institutional objects. An institutional entity is a language construct that is ‘spoken into existence’. We elaborate on how institutional identity changes how we understand conceptual modelling and the models produced. We show that different models result if we base modelling on a property-based conception of identity compared to an institutional one. We use the Bunge-Wand-Weber principles, which embrace a property-based view of identity, as an anchor to the existing literature to point out how this type of ontology sidesteps identity in general and institutional identity in particular. We contribute theoretically by providing the first in-depth ontological analysis of what the notion of institutional identity can bring to conceptual modelling. We also contribute a solid ontological grounding of identity management and the identity of things in digital infrastructures.

In the third paper, Lagna & Ravishankar (2022) explore the potential of fintech innovations to enhance financial inclusion and reduce poverty. The authors argue that while the IS research community is taking significant interest in fintech, published research rarely speaks to financial inclusion or else uses the term in a perfunctory manner with limited focus on pro-poor finance. Building on calls for socially impactful IS and management research, Lagna and Ravishankar encourage scholars to take an ethical turn and pay more attention to pro-poor financial inclusion. To this end, they draw on the existing IS literature on fintech and Information and Communication Technologies for Development scholarship to develop a framework for guiding IS research on fintech-led financial inclusion. This framework highlights the entrepreneurial, strategic, technological and developmental facets of fintech for financial inclusion.

In the fourth paper, Baham and Hirschheim (2022) note that 20 years after the Agile Manifesto was developed, agile software development (ASD) has become widely adopted in organisations that engage in software development. Born out of practice, ASD has received much attention from researchers who have provided several insights into the phenomenon with theoretical underpinnings and empirical support. Still, despite calls for a more unified theoretical understanding of ASD, a theoretical core of ASD has not been identified. Thus, what constitutes ‘agile’ theoretically is still said to be unclear. The authors offer a theoretical core of ASD research, clarifying what is essential and what is less essential for IS agility, with the intention of sparking a scholarly discussion, and providing implications of such a core for understanding method tailoring.

In the fifth paper, Randolph et al. (2022) provide evidence of how information systems (IS) can make a meaningful difference to a person's quality of life. The results of a design science research effort help people with limited communication ability due to severe motor disabilities communicate through better brain–computer interface design. The authors present an augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) system that incorporates context-aware user profiles to improve the communication process for individuals with severe motor disabilities. They offer design principles substantiated by media synchronicity theory to inform those designing communication systems for individuals that rely on AAC systems.

In the sixth paper, Kim et al. (2022) examine the factors affecting insiders' security breach from the prosocial rule breaking perspective. They develop a research model including factors such as prosocial motivational assessment and situationally induced personal characteristics. In the context of healthcare, they empirically test the model with nursing students in South Korea with a scenario-based experiment. They find both altruistic and egoistic motivations affect situational empathy, while an egoistic motivation affects subjects' perceived responsibility to commit prosocial rule breaking. Furthermore, they find that the perceived responsibility mediates the relationship between empathy and prosocial intention to rule breaking. They argue that organisations can better manage prosocially motivated insiders' security breach by understanding these factors and their relationships.

In the seventh paper, Mezazade Mehrizi et al. (2022) show that established ways of thinking of and working with IS (legacy habits) not only inhibit the transition to the new system, but sometimes can create an initial trigger for discontinuing a legacy systems (detracting role) and further act as a bridge for learning how to use new systems that replace legacy systems (bridging role). By comparing two cases, they explain how the role that legacy habits play in legacy discontinuance is contingent on the configuration of various socio-technical conditions: the technical similarity between the legacy and new systems, users' orientation towards change, the extent to which IS change requires the move towards routine activities and whether the tasks are organised collectively or individually. As a novel focus, the study shows that understanding IS change requires examining how users deal with legacy systems, as well as how they adopt new ones.

In the last paper, Payton et al. (2022) employ the genre of an opinion piece to convey their experiences as black scholars in the IS discipline. Focussing on the Black Lives Matter movement, the authors articulate how systemic and personal challenges impact the professional careers and even scholarly contributions of black professors. Though the AIS has examined diversity among its members and released a public statement in response to recent social and political events, the authors go further by offering actionable recommendations designed to embrace inclusion through transparency, justification, compliance and enforcement. The authors challenge the field to examine its structural barriers both within the AIS along with constraining practices in IS departments as well as their colleges and broader institutional environments.

信息系统期刊( ISJ ) 收到了大量的投稿，这些投稿描述了在新环境中直接或稍微修改了成熟的理论观点的应用。遗憾的是，高级编辑拒绝了其中许多投稿，而没有将它们送去进行正式审查。这篇社论解释了为什么会发生这种情况，并描述了在这种情况下什么可能构成足够的贡献。

2020 年，ISJ对 368 件提交的材料做出了最终决定。虽然ISJ刻意避免设定接收数量的硬性目标以允许发表好的研究，但可供发表的位置数量显然是有限的。

与期刊容量限制同样重要的是审稿团队资源有限。每篇送审的论文都需要一名高级编辑、一名副编辑和两到三名审稿人。当使用每篇论文两名审稿人的保守数量时，368 个最终决定至少需要 736 名审稿人。寻找具有相关专业知识的审稿人来审稿是一个艰苦的过程，因为最合格的审稿人已经多次为ISJ和/或其他期刊审阅其他手稿。副主编通常需要接触许多潜在的审稿人，以确保获得两名合格的审稿人。

除此之外，收到修改和重新提交决定的提交需要更长的时间承诺。三轮审稿很容易就需要 18 个月（审稿过程 90 天，作者每轮修改稿件需要 90 天）。虽然这些时间承诺有时看起来很痛苦，但它们对于帮助作者发布他们作品的最佳版本的质量审查过程至关重要。很可能大多数作者都经历了多轮审查的令人沮丧的过程，才意识到最终他们的工作得到了很大的改进。

所有这一切与在新背景下简单地应用既定理论的提交有什么关系？答案是，很多！作为信息系统协会 (AIS) 的八个期刊，ISJ收到了大量高质量的投稿。编辑必须做出艰难的选择，决定哪些稿件送审，哪些稿件直接拒稿（即“桌面拒稿”）。编辑团队在此过程中会考虑许多因素。IS 社区，更重要的是，ISJ的读者会对这项研究感兴趣吗？该研究是否建立在之前发表在ISJ上的研究之上? 研究动机是否良好？最终接受的机会有多大？理论框架是否合适？这些方法是否适合回答研究问题？该研究是否为现有的知识体系提供了新的见解或开辟了一个新的研究领域？对最后一个问题的否定回答是编辑经常拒绝仅在新环境中应用完善的理论模型的提交的主要原因之一。

TAM（及其衍生产品，如 TAM2、TAM3、UTAUT 和 UTAUT2）是经常在新环境中应用的成熟理论的一个特别突出的例子。TAM 及其相关版本是众所周知的；因此，研究人员将它们应用到新环境中相对简单，例如当组织向用户推出新软件包时。这并不是说进行这项研究不需要很大的努力。在许多情况下，确实如此。这也不意味着这些发现没有价值，特别是对于研究人员应用该模型的组织而言。事实上，组织应该对应用 TAM 感兴趣；他们可以使用成熟的模型了解新技术的接受度。然而，¹¹ 模型在新环境中总是有可能无法预测。在这种情况下，研究人员可能会发现对 TAM 适用性的新见解。这是否提供了重要的理论贡献是另一个问题。
由于研究人员一再建立 TAM 的预测特性，此类研究对现有知识的补充很少，因此不太可能在严格的ISJ审查过程中幸存下来。

其他提交尝试将其他构造集成到不同版本的 TAM 中。然而，这些提交的内容往往包含研究人员先前引入该文献的结构。有时，作者似乎几乎是任意添加新结构。在横断面调查设计中，许多感知测量至少会与行为意图等结果有一些差异。作者兴高采烈地宣称他们的新模型解释了额外的差异，因此，包含新变量非常重要。这些作者经常忘记的是为什么首先包含这个新变量的动机。研究涉及解释力和简约性之间的权衡。尽管该模型可能会解释更多的方差，是否值得在简约中进行权衡？新变量和相关的理论基础是否提供了新的科学见解？这些重要问题需要的不仅仅是作者表面的理由。鉴于频率向已建立的理论模型添加变量的ISJ提交的作品最终发表的可能性极小。

那么在这种情况下，什么构成了足够的贡献呢？卡特和贝朗热（2005) 提供了一个很好的例子，说明如何成功地整合几种不同的理论观点。Carter 和 Bélanger 为这篇文章定下了基调，就为何将可信赖性、创新和接受度因素的整合代表了更好地理解电子政务服务软件接受度的重要一步提供了丰富的激励性讨论。作者首先描述了四个相关的理论观点，即技术接受模型、创新扩散、创新的感知特征，最后是可信度的概念。接下来，他们比较了这些不同观点的理论机制，并成功地将它们整合到一个合理的研究模型中。然后，作者验证了每个构造的测量值，并使用回归分析来评估测量值之间的关系。这并不奇怪，ISJ将 Carter 和 Bélanger ( 2005 ) 列为其历史上被引用次数最多的文章之一。根据谷歌学术，这也是这两位作者的最高引用论文。

尽管这篇社论依赖于 TAM 相关示例，但作者经常提交以类似方式使用其他理论的作品。既定的理论要么直接应用于新环境，要么在没有适当动机的情况下添加新变量。这两种情况都没有提供足以在ISJ等顶级期刊上发表的知识贡献。

最后，尽管拒绝总是令人失望，但作者可以放心，他们有很好的伙伴。接近 90% 的ISJ提交被拒绝。这篇社论应该通过避免提交通常会导致拒绝的稿件类型来帮助作者降低被拒绝的几率。

在本期ISJ中，我们展示了八篇论文。

在第一篇论文中，阿蒙·拉普 (Amon Rapp) ( 2022) 通过社会实践理论研究大型多人在线角色扮演游戏，以了解游戏时间如何影响玩家的参与度。作者表明，在电子游戏中，时间在多个时间段中展开，这些时间段由游戏设计师通过设计某些游戏设计元素（即游戏的基本设计组件）进行策划和调整。这些时间性通过将玩家与游戏社区的共享时间性联系起来，使他们长期感到满足，并使他们的游戏体验自动化，从而引发了以各种方式刺激参与的时间体验。该研究通过对如何有意设计时间来维持用户参与度提出新的理解，为信息系统研究做出了贡献。此外，

在第二篇论文中，Eriksson 和 Ågerfalk ( 2022) 分析身份的本体论问题，特别关注制度身份，即社会建构的制度对象的身份。一个机构实体是一种语言结构，它是“说出来的”。我们详细阐述了机构身份如何改变我们对概念建模和产生的模型的理解。我们表明，如果我们基于基于财产的身份概念而不是制度概念进行建模，则会产生不同的模型。我们使用包含基于属性的身份观的 Bunge-Wand-Weber 原则作为现有文献的锚，以指出这种类型的本体论如何回避一般的身份，特别是机构身份。我们通过提供第一个深入的本体论分析来解释机构身份的概念可以给概念建模带来什么，从而在理论上做出贡献。我们还为身份管理和数字基础设施中事物的身份提供了坚实的本体论基础。

在第三篇论文中，Lagna & Ravishankar ( 2022) 探索金融科技创新在增强金融包容性和减少贫困​​方面的潜力。作者认为，虽然 IS 研究界对金融科技产生了浓厚的兴趣，但已发表的研究很少提及金融包容性，或者以敷衍的方式使用该术语，对扶贫金融的关注有限。在呼吁具有社会影响力的 IS 和管理研究的基础上，Lagna 和 Ravishankar 鼓励学者转向伦理，更多地关注有利于穷人的金融包容性。为此，他们利用现有的关于金融科技和信息通信技术促进发展奖学金的信息系统文献，制定了一个框架，用于指导信息系统研究以金融科技为主导的金融包容性。该框架突出了创业、战略、

在第四篇论文中，Baham 和 Hirschheim ( 2022 ) 指出，在敏捷宣言发布 20 年后开发后，敏捷软件开发 (ASD) 已在从事软件开发的组织中得到广泛采用。ASD 源于实践，受到了研究人员的广泛关注，他们提供了对该现象的一些见解，并提供了理论基础和经验支持。尽管如此，尽管呼吁对 ASD 进行更统一的理论理解，但 ASD 的理论核心尚未确定。因此，理论上什么构成“敏捷”仍然不清楚。作者提供了 ASD 研究的理论核心，阐明了对于 IS 敏捷性而言哪些是必不可少的，哪些是不太重要的，目的是引发学术讨论，并为理解方法剪裁提供这种核心的含义。

在第五篇论文中，Randolph 等人。( 2022 ) 提供了信息系统 (IS) 如何对一个人的生活质量产生有意义的影响的证据。一项设计科学研究工作的结果帮助因严重运动障碍而导致沟通能力有限的人通过更好的脑机接口设计进行沟通。作者提出了一种增强和替代通信 (AAC) 系统，该系统结合了上下文感知用户配置文件，以改善严重运动障碍者的通信过程。他们提供了由媒体同步理论证实的设计原则，以告知那些为依赖 AAC 系统的个人设计通信系统的人。

在第六篇论文中，Kim 等人。( 2022) 从亲社会规则破坏的角度考察影响内部人员安全漏洞的因素。他们开发了一个研究模型，包括诸如亲社会动机评估和情境诱导的个人特征等因素。在医疗保健的背景下，他们通过基于场景的实验与韩国的护理专业学生对该模型进行了实证测试。他们发现利他主义和利己主义动机都会影响情境共情，而利己主义动机会影响受试者对违反亲社会规则的感知责任。此外，他们发现感知责任在移情和亲社会意图打破规则之间的关系中起中介作用。他们认为，组织可以更好地管理具有亲社会动机的内部人员的

在第七篇论文中，Mezazade Mehrizi 等人。( 2022) 表明，既定的思考和使用 IS（遗留习惯）的方式不仅会抑制向新系统的过渡，而且有时会产生终止遗留系统的初始触发因素（贬低角色），并进一步充当学习的桥梁如何使用新系统替代旧系统（桥接角色）。通过比较两个案例，他们解释了遗留习惯在遗留中断中所起的作用如何取决于各种社会技术条件的配置：遗留系统和新系统之间的技术相似性、用户对变化的导向、IS 的程度改变需要转向日常活动，以及这些任务是集体组织还是单独组织。作为小说焦点，

在上一篇论文中，佩顿等人。( 2022) 使用评论文章的类型来传达他们作为 IS 学科中的黑人学者的经历。作者专注于“黑人的命也是命”运动，阐述了系统性和个人挑战如何影响黑人教授的职业生涯甚至学术贡献。尽管 AIS 已经检查了其成员之间的多样性，并针对最近的社会和政治事件发表了公开声明，但作者进一步提供了可操作的建议，旨在通过透明度、正当性、合规性和执法来拥抱包容性。作者对该领域提出了挑战，以检查其在 AIS 内部的结构性障碍以及 IS 部门及其学院和更广泛的制度环境中的限制实践。