isr-workflow
Information Systems Research Workflow (isr-workflow)
Overview
This is the router. It does not replace any specialized skill; it tells you which isr- skill to use right now* for your Information Systems Research (ISR) manuscript.
Default assumption: unless the user says otherwise, treat the target as ISR — the INFORMS quarterly at the intersection of technology, organizations, economics, and society, and a member of the IS field's Senior Scholars' Basket of Eight. ISR's identity is deliberately sociotechnical and intradisciplinary: it is receptive to the design, management, use, valuation, and impacts of IT across multiple levels of analysis (individuals, groups, firms, networks, societies, nations), and it houses both rigorous behavioral/empirical research and analytical economic, econometric, and design-science modeling as co-equal first-class genres. The recurring editorial question is not only "is the method sound?" but "does this bridge IS silos and advance our intradisciplinary understanding of the sociotechnical?"
Editorial team context: Suprateek Sarker (University of Virginia, McIntire) is the current Editor-in-Chief; his inaugural editorial appeared in ISR 34(1):1-4 on February 27, 2023. The 2025 multimethod-research framework editorial (ISR 36(2)) formalizes guidance for combining qualitative, quantitative, analytical, and design-science methods. Re-check the current masthead and policies at pubsonline.informs.org/journal/isre before submission.
When to trigger
- "What should I do next?" with a half-built ISR manuscript
- You have an analytical model or a dataset but no clear sociotechnical, intradisciplinary story
- A reviewer/SE pushes on "contribution to IS" or "this is single-paradigm" and you are unsure which stage is the bottleneck
- You received an ISR decision letter and need to switch into response mode
- You keep bouncing between modeling/analysis, theory, and writing without a plan