Since 1969, the DATA BASE for ADVANCES IN INFORMATION SYSTEMS has had a significant impact on the IS discipline as an outlet for high-quality research.  In reviewing the list of editors who have guided this journal prior to our tenure here, its strong reputation has resulted from the hard work and dedication of many people - senior editors who have developed and cultivated high-quality research, reviewers who have taken the time to carefully examine the work of their peers, and authors who have submitted their best manuscripts to expand the body of knowledge.  We are honored to be guiding this journal into a new era. 
 
Our vision for DATA BASE hinges upon one key word – ADVANCES in Information Systems.  To advance means ‘to propel forward in a new direction’.  Accordingly, we seek to advance our field – through thought-provoking, progressive work.  We want DATA BASE for ADVANCES IN INFORMATION SYSTEMS to be a place where we can turn to find well-developed manuscripts that challenge our field to move in promising new directions.  In this pursuit we are not bound by established paradigms or approaches, but rather seek diversity in thought and methods, while yet maintaining the intellectual rigor of the journal.
 
We therefore extend a call to you to submit your best empirical work for inclusion within our pages.  Our editorial team will encourage and help develop your ideas so that we are publishing high-impact, high-quality research, but this simply isn’t possible without your submissions.   In addition to this broad invitation for papers, there are five content foci that we are specifically seeking to advance.  While not an exhaustive list, these will include 1) senior scholars’ perspectives, 2) methodological advances, 3) framework/review articles, and 4) case studies.
 
We will be including articles as invited “perspectives” pieces from Senior Scholars in the field.  These pieces will be broad in nature, whether addressing the field (overall), a research area in which the senior scholar writing the piece has expertise, or a general trend of interest to the IS community.
 
We will also focus on advancing new research methodologies for the IS field. We will actively seek pieces that highlight new methods that IS researchers can employ (perhaps in the form of tutorials, but more importantly in developing novel methodologies focused on the IS field). We intend to focus on new research methods and approaches that represent advances in our thinking about research in IS.  In particular, we intend to promote an emphasis on measurement development pieces and encourage you to submit work that creates and validates measures for key phenomena within the discipline.
 
We will encourage and focus on in-depth framework and review articles that advance our thinking about a specific research area. No journals of which we are aware currently emphasize these types of articles, although they tend to be highly read and highly cited and thus provide the journal with an opportunity to advance research.
 
Many of our colleagues that teach MBA courses in IS rely heavily upon case studies for their pedagogical needs. However, our assessment is that there are limited outlets for these types of articles that are peer-reviewed. We will seek to address this need in the community by providing such an outlet. Case study articles tend to be highly read and used both for teaching and research, thus providing an opportunity for us to enhance the academic impact of the journal.
 
We decided fairly early on that our effort would be only as good as the people working with us.  To this end, we have carefully selected outstanding editorial boards.  First, we have added a board of “Preeminent Editors.”  These individuals will not handle routine editorial positions, but will help identify potentially important new ideas in the discipline and as well identify individuals whose ideas merit consideration for invitation to the journal.  Further, they will provide advice to and insight regarding ideas that merit attention in the journal.   The names on the list should offer some indication as to why we believe them to be preeminent; these individuals often appear as both editors and authors in the very best journals in our field.  We have also recruited some exceptional individuals as Senior Editors, all of whom possess excellent research records.  Both of the boards reflect the fact that we sought to recruit individuals who would be representative of the breadth and reach of our field, and we are pleased to have such strong colleagues working with us in this effort.
 
While our ideas will always be subject to revision and improvement, the main point is that we’d like to make the DATA BASE for ADVANCES IN INFORMATION SYSTEMS into the kind of journal we’d like to read.  Hopefully you’ll find it to be one you’ll like to read as well.  If we accomplish this, we’ll have done the field a service, and by doing this will enhance even further the journal’s visibility and impact.