Recognizing the strength of the global AIS community: Year in Review

Happy New Year 2024!  In this year, the AIS will be celebrating 30 years of serving society in the advancement of knowledge and excellence in the study and profession of information systems.

As a New Year has started, we take the opportunity to reflect on significant accomplishments across the Association during the prior year and to highlight upcoming events. We are delighted to highlight some of these incredible achievements and milestones from 2023:   

• AIS members elected five new AIS Council members in 2023: President-Elect (Andrew Burton-Jones), VP of Region 1 (Kevin Scheibe), VP of Region 2 (Pär Ågerfalk), VP of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (Manju Ahuja), and ICIS Representative (Stacie Petter). The VP DEI is a new voting role on AIS Council, and we look forward to initiatives that celebrate our diversity and shape AIS into a more visibly inclusive association. We will soon be advertising the positions that are coming up for elections in the next year.  Please ensure you vote in the upcoming 2024 AIS elections to let your voices be heard and to identify leaders who will continue to represent our entire global community.
• AIS Council approved a new  Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct as well as a new Code of Conduct for AIS Meetings and Events during the December 2023 AIS Council meeting. These substitute earlier versions of the code of conduct for AIS members and complement the Research Code of Conduct and the eLibrary discussion thread Code of Conduct. The codes and reporting procedures are available on the AIS site and the eLibrary.
• The AIS eLibrary reached 28.8 million article downloads and abstract views from 190 countries by the end of 2023.  On average, every article in the eLibrary is downloaded 213 times and garners more than 465 abstract views. The eLibrary also received a makeover during 2023 and was expanded to include teaching resources, a Digital Academy repository, and much more. The AIS Institutional Directory has been launched to map where information systems is taught globally. A new collaboration was launched at ICIS 2023 to welcome the Journal of Information Technology as an AIS affiliated journal. A new AVP of Education Curations (Andreas Janson) was also announced to help lead the effort of curating these new critically important areas of the eLibrary.
• The AIS Industry Advisory Board has been established with inaugural meetings discussing possible synergies and avenues for collaboration.
• New Leadership in the Student Chapters Program was announced with a new Associate Vice President for Student Chapters (Gladys Simpson) and a new position of Associate Vice President for Global Expansion (B. Veeresh Thummadi).
• CAIS announced new Co-Editors in Chief Denis Dennehy and Mary Tate in June 2023.  We extend our sincere gratitude and thanks for the countless contributions of the outgoing CAIS EIC Fred Niederman.
• The AIS College of Senior Scholars (CSS) expanded the Basket of Eight Journals to include three additional journals in the CSS List of Premier Journals, to provide more consistency in tenure and promotion cases.
• A new AIS Mid-Career Award was launched to recognize individuals in the middle stages of their careers who have made outstanding research, teaching, and/or service contributions to the field of information systems.  
• The AIS Kauffman Entrepreneurial Innovation Fellowship (EIF) program concluded its first Cohort of Ph.D. students during 2023 and just recently launched Cohort II for 2024. The EIF program offers annual grants, travel assistance and mentoring opportunities with PhD students studying the intersection of innovation, entrepreneurship, and information systems.
• AIS also announced the Industry-Academia Research Collaboratory for India (IARCI) at ICIS 2023. The mission of the IARCI program is to foster research between academic scholars and companies based in India and provide a connectivity platform to better connect scholars in India with the global community of IS scholars from across the globe.

Hearty congratulations are extended to the remarkably successful regional conferences of AMCIS23 in Panama, ECIS23 in Norway and PACIS23 in Nanchang, China. All three regional conferences are now formally recognized in the AIS Bylaws as the official AIS Region 1 conference (AMCIS), Region 2 conference (ECIS) and Region 3 conference (PACIS). AMCIS 2023 in Panama celebrated the largest scholarship program to date (over $30,000) to help numerous Ph.D. students and faculty from throughout Latin America and beyond to attend and participate in the conference.  In fact during 2023, Council approved the formation of nearly 40 new donation funds to assist SIGs and community groups to support and continue their research endeavors.  

AIS ended the year 2023 with the most prestigious gathering of information systems scholars and research-oriented practitioners in the world with ICIS 2023 in Hyderabad, India. Led by Conference Chairs Souren Paul, Suprateek Sarker, and Virpi Kristiina Tuunainen with Program Chairs Walter Fernandez, Joe Nandhakumar, and Radhika Santhanam, we welcomed attendees from 45 countries gathered in India for the first time for ICIS 2023. The conference also featured ancillary events (workshops, symposiums, SIG meetings, etc.), two outstanding keynote speakers, a spectacular social event, awards lunches, exhibitors, and much more. We extend our sincere thanks to the entire ICIS 2023 Conference Committee and congratulate the Best Conference Paper award recipients (see here (https://aisel.aisnet.org/icis2023/awards.html/) for a complete listing).  

As always, the year concluded by recognizing the most incredible contributions of members from across the Association with the AIS LEO recipients, the AIS Fellows, the Sandra Slaughter Service Award Recipients, and many more. All of the 2023 award winners can be found here (https://aisel.aisnet.org/icis2023/keynote_awards/keynote_awards/1/) while the full history of recipients can always be found here (https://ishistory.aisnet.org/awards/).  

AIS remains totally committed to supporting the global IS community. We encourage all members to continue leveraging the resources for research, teaching, collaboration, webinars, communication, SIGs, chapters, grants, and scholarships that are offered through the Association. With AIS membership levels and eLibrary traffic levels at all-time highs, we are grateful for your continued intellectual contributions, engagement, and support toward making the entire community a success. As we look forward to 2024 with ECIS in Cyprus; PACIS in Vietnam; AMCIS in Utah, USA; and ICIS in Thailand, AIS will continue reaching out across all corners of the global community and collaborating with each of the respective conference committees.  Together, the global AIS community can not only survive but can also thrive.   

Thank you for being a member of AIS and we wish you the happiest, healthiest, and most wonderful 2024.

Sincerely,

AIS Presidents, AIS Council, AIS Staff