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Route to the Ph.D. in Information Systems: policy and procedures review

Part 2:Finding your dissertation advisor; The Dissertation CommitteeThe State of the Art paper

Starr Roxanne Hiltz, Spring 2007

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The State of the art paper (“SOTA”)

•Students should be thinking about possible dissertation topics and advisors, from their first semester.•After passing the general qualifying exam, and taking some advanced courses, they should enroll for SOTA with their intended advisor. •(Note, in future SOTA may be part of the pre-dissertation research courses)

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Choosing a Ph.D. Advisor• Initial students start out with the Ph.D. program

director as their advisor, to approve the course plans and recheck any needed bridge courses and transfer credits

• Students may choose a different advisor at any time, but the proposed advisor must agree to this. As soon as you know your dissertation topic and primary advisor, that person should become your official advisor.

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• The primary advisor may be any tenure track faculty member in the Information Systems Department (including joint appointments).

• Currently, if you want an advisor from another department, you must also have an IS co-advisor.

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Choosing a Ph.D. Advisor and Topic Area

• Be sure to come and listen to faculty presentations in the seminar; you need not only an advisor but also 3-4 other committee members from NJIT

• Take a course from anybody who might be your advisor...

• Write up about a 2 page summary of a topic area or areas you are interested in and circulate them to several possible faculty members and then go discuss them. Choose the advisor who seems to respond to you the best and be closest to your interests and who is interested in a topic you want to do.

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Note: Faculty and student must “choose each other”

Faculty can only handle about 6 students maximum at once as primary advisor; they may not have time to take on new students

Faculty must feel interested in and competent in the area you choose in order to agree to be your advisor. They take on this very labor-intensive task voluntarily, only if they choose to do so.

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The Dissertation Committee: a reminder

• Your committee must UNANIMOUSLY approve your final dissertation.

• Therefore, you do not want it too large.• BUT: each committee member is also a

possible resource in terms of advice to you.• Size: a minimum of five, of whom at least 3

must be in IS (includes joint appointments and research professors); at least one should be outside NJIT. Usually, start with SIX so that if you lose one, you are okay.

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Changing advisors or committee members

• Until a proposal is defended and accepted, the topic and the advisor and the committee are “tentative.”

• If you do find it necessary to change, first speak to the existing advisor. Bring in Ph.D. program director if mediation is necessary.

• WARNING: every change of advisor will cost you six months or more!!

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• “Outside” member should be a person outside of NJIT who is publishing in the field. A resume showing these qualifications should be submitted with the names of the proposed committee, to the Ph.D. director.

• A practitioner without these qualifications may also be added, as an extra member.– Often done in “collaborative” doctorates.

The Dissertation Committee

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Formalizing the committee

• A form has to be filed with the graduate dean’s office, with information on this committee, with approval signed by the Ph.D. director or the department chair.

• It is suggested that this form be filed near or just after the proposal defense, since until the defense, the committee is tentative.

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The State of the art paper• This literature review should survey (and

discuss in detail) all of the published research and theory in topic areas related to the proposed dissertation.

• It should “add value” with analyses, synthesis and critiques, not be just a series of article reviews.

• It lays the foundation for the thesis, and parts of it, updated, will appear as the lit review chapters in the thesis.

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Contents/ Style of SOTA• Usual length: (about 100 pages, double

spaced)-- an introduction, then chapters on each of the topic areas related to your dissertation, conclusion and reference list.– E.g.: A proposed study of leadership and trust

in virtual teams would have chapters on the literature on virtual teams, leadership, and the study of trust in teams.

• Suggested guideline: the MISQ article on literature review papers

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The State of the art paper• Demonstrates the student’s mastery of

the prior research and theoretical literature related to the dissertation area.

• The final paper must be approved by a committee of at least three (who normally become part of the dissertation committee).

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Publishing the SOTA

• The paper, in HTML form, may be/ should be put up on the department website. (Put Copyright on first page).

• The paper should lead to one or more publications.

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• The SOTA should lead to identification of the specific, more narrow area or set of research questions, that will be the dissertation topic.

• It should also help identify methods ( eg, scales) that are appropriate to study the topic.

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SOTA certification and documentation• An “examination” report (form) on

passage of the SOTA and approval by the committee of three, is filed by the advisor or program director.

• The committee could also require an oral exam on SOTA.

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SOTA vs. Proposal

• AFTER the SOTA, the student may enroll for dissertation research (pre-doc) and defend a dissertation proposal.

• Note: in fact, some work on the proposal occurs in parallel. While writing the SOTA, you should start getting ideas for the research you will work on, and start storing ideas and materials for your draft proposal.

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ANALYZING THE PAST TO PREPAREFOR THE FUTURE: WRITING ALITERATURE REVIEW• By: Jane Webster, Queens

University• Richard T. Watson, The

University of Georgia

• MISQ March 2002

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MISQ- the lit review

• A review of prior, relevant literature is an essential feature of any academic project. An effective review creates a firm foundation for advancing knowledge.

• It facilitates theory development, closes areas where a plethora of research exists, and uncovers areas where research is needed.

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MISQ – The lit review paper: Needs an overall Framework• A coherent review emerges only

from a coherent conceptual structuring of the topic itself.

• For most reviews, this requires a guiding theory, a set of competing models, or a point of view about the phenomenon under discussion

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Beginning Your Article• In some papers we have received,

the topic does not emerge. until well into the article. Moreover, the contributions are not clear.

• In contrast, to hook your reader early, the introduction to your paper needs to motivate your topic, provide a working definition of your key variable(s), and clearly articulate the paper’s contributions.

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Ways of demonstrating contributions include:• Providing a new theoretical

understanding that helps to explain previously confusing results, noting that little research has addressed this topic, providing calls from well-respected academics to examine this topic…

• Bringing together previously-disparate streams of work to help shed light on a phenomenon, and suggesting important implications for practice.

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We recommend a structured approach to determine the source material for the review:• (1) The major contributions are likely to

be in the leading journals. It makes sense, therefore, to start with them. While journal databases like ABI/Inform (ProQuest) accelerate identification of relevant articles, scanning a journal’s table of contents is a useful way to pinpoint others not caught by your keyword sieve.

• You should also examine selected conference proceedings, especially those with a reputation for quality.

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Finding all the literature

• (2) Go backward by reviewing the citations for the articles identified in step 1 to determine prior articles you should consider.

• (3) Go forward by using the Web of Science (the electronic version of the Social Sciences Citation Index) [ and Google Scholar] to identify articles citing the key articles identified in the previous steps. Determine which of these articles should be included in the review.

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(scope of sources)

• Because IS is an interdisciplinary field straddling other disciplines, you often must look not only within the IS discipline when reviewing and developing theory but also outside the field.

• Will also have to check some books too- find ones cited in the reference lists of journal articles.

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Structuring the review

• A literature review is concept-centric. Thus, concepts determine the organizing framework of a review. In contrast, some authors take an author-centric approach and essentially present a summary of the relevant articles. This method fails to synthesize the literature.

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Adding value with conceptually organized summary charts• Tables and figures can be an effective

means of communicating major findings and insights.

• Nonetheless, tables cannot be merely lists of articles. They need to add value by categorizing articles based on a scheme that helps to define the topic area, such as types of variables examined, level of analysis, gaps in the literature, or other important theoretical issues.

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Summary: An ideal literature review:

• Motivates the research topic and explains the review’s contributions

• Describes the key concepts• Delineates the boundaries of the research• Reviews relevant prior literature in IS and

related areas• Develops a model to guide future

research• Justifies propositions by presenting

theoretical explanations, past empirical findings, and practical examples

• Presents concluding implications for researchers and managers.

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My suggestions:

• Read this whole MISQ article• Read some comprehensive published lit

reviews, eg, in MISQ and the Fjermestad and Hiltz reviews of Group Support Systems in JMIS

• Develop a coding template to put all relevant aspects of an article in a database as you read it; e.g., see – HTTP://Www.ALNResearch.org database

entries for papers

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Suggested procedures

• Review and discuss your scope of literature review, and your proposed coding template, with your advisor

• As you start to code actual articles, you will find that your initial coding template needs to be expanded

• Keep original papers (usually collection of pdf files), but your template should record everything you need for your review (ideally)

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Publish your SOTA!!

• Good outlets for portions of the reviews are conferences

• A really comprehensive, theory-clarifying review is publishable in MISQ and other leading journals.