Aug 31Algorithms, Humans, and the Duality of Data–A Futile Attempt to Define IS PhenomenaMy PhD supervisor Jannis Kallinikos once said that a field of research is defined by the phenomena it studies, while an academic discipline constructs its object of research. By this definition, the study of information systems is merely a field, even if we as IS scholars often like to call…Information Systems3 min readInformation Systems3 min read
Jan 26, 2022Social Media Was Consuming Me — But I Took Back Control!In this post, I reflect upon the use of social media as a part of my attempt to build an academic career — Twitter and LinkedIn are useful depending where your audience is, but avoid being drawn into the algorithmic games of Facebook. Recently, I started feeling that instead of…Academia6 min readAcademia6 min read
Jan 10, 2022How to Count the Review Rounds in a Peer-review Process?A PhD student recently asked me how to count the review rounds of a paper that is under review — and I failed to give a clear answer. In fact, realized that I have always been a little bit confused about the issue myself. So I decided to clear up…Academia2 min readAcademia2 min read
Dec 8, 2021Gender Bias in Management Information SystemsIn this post, Silvia Masiero and I reflect upon gender bias in the academic field of information systems. In April 2020, the female co-author of this post submitted a panel proposal to a renowned conference in the field of information systems. The evaluations of the panel proposal were single-blind, that…Gender Bias4 min readGender Bias4 min read
Oct 4, 2021There Is No Self-plagiarismPlagiarism is a gross academic misconduct that should be treated with zero tolerance. Merriam-Webster defines plagiarism as “the act of using another person’s words or ideas without giving credit to that person”. However, every now and then I hear a colleague worrying about self-plagiarism — usually related to their own…Academic Writing2 min readAcademic Writing2 min read
May 25, 2021Academia as CompetitionAcademics are almost always working. We love what we do and, I believe, many of us are like me who cannot stop thinking about my research. At the same time, academic institutions put us into a competition that can be extremely stressful even for the winners who need to keep…Academia8 min readAcademia8 min read
Apr 2, 2021I Deleted My Academia.edu Account and You Should TooI am not the first one to write this post (see here and here) and hopefully not the last. Recently, I started receiving requests from Academia.edu to review papers for their Academia Letters publication. The requests are seemingly generated by an algorithm as they state in the emails: “While we…Academia3 min readAcademia3 min read
Mar 14, 2021Member-onlySolutions That Create ProblemsThere are many problems in this world for which we do not have a proper solution. Climate change is a good example of such a problem looking for a solution or, more accurately, a solution that could be easily implemented. If the market economy functions well, the recognition of problems…Technological Innovation3 min readTechnological Innovation3 min read
Feb 5, 2021A Simple Vocabulary of Data Science ConceptsThis is a short summary of data science concepts I wrote for undergraduate students at Temple University. Data are records that contain facts about some phenomenon. The data can be unstructured such as natural language writings and images or structured such as weather readings and stock prices. The structure of…Vocabulary2 min readVocabulary2 min read
Nov 24, 2020Paying for Peer Reviews is a Bad IdeaEvery now and then one comes across the idea that academics should be paid for doing peer reviews. The reasoning goes usually something like this — peer reviewing takes up a fair amount of an academic researcher’s time; therefore, paying for peer reviews would be fair and could help particularly…Peer Review5 min readPeer Review5 min read
