An immodest proposal – going “All in” on replication research in information systems

Genuine theory testing, also under the term “replication research”, is rarely found in Information Systems (IS) research. Based on a replication’s results, our understanding or representation of the original theory is updated. This function of replication is integral to a scientific discipline to accumulate confidence in the explanatory power of a theory and to weed out theories that did not withstand scrutiny. However, many new theories are only tested once in the original study, while subsequent studies reference it without explicitly questioning the original theory. Against this background, we examine three aspects of the current state of replication studies in IS: (1) how many explicit replication studies in key IS research outlets have been published; (2) the attitudes of senior scholars, mostly prestigious IS journals’ editors, towards publishing replication research in their journals; and (3) a new policy proposal towards replication research broadly across all journals. We propose that all journals should take responsibility for publishing replications of theory or empirical results that have formerly been presented in that journal.