An investigation of source use in the results and the closing sections of empirical articles in Information Systems: In search of a functional-semantic citation typology for pedagogical purposes

This paper presents an analysis of how behavioral science researchers from the soft domain of Information Systems (IS) engage prior knowledge of the field to construct research claims in journal articles. Data was drawn from the Results and the Discussion sections of 40 IS research articles published in one research journal (MIS Quarterly, N=20) and one applied-research journal (Information Management, N=20). To perform the analysis, the Results and the Discussion sections of the articles were first parsed into moves, and citations in each of the moves were classified according to their rhetorical functions and the types of knowledge cited (semantic content). Based on the classification, a functional-semantic citation typology was developed. Counts of the citations in each category represented in the typology were then subjected to a series of statistical analyses to examine their distribution across the two journals as well as the two target sections. The results reveal that while all the citation categories in the typology were present in both journals, they appeared only sparingly in the IM articles, and cross-sectional differences in their distribution were statistically significant in the MIS Quarterly corpus only. Pedagogical implications will be presented.