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RESEARCH PRODUCT

How to frame your contribution to knowledge? A guide for junior researchers in information systems

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Master students and junior researchers within the Information Systems (IS) field often struggle to frame their knowledge contributions when reporting their research. In this paper, we investigated this research question: what are the forms of knowledge contributions that can be targeted in information systems research? We analysed a selection of NOKOBIT papers that were written by junior researchers, with their previous masters or PhD supervisors as co-authors. As expected, we found that all papers followed the same script of identifying a research gap and trying to fill it. While the practical contributions often can be acknowledged, the theoretical contribution can be more difficult to identify. The contribution of this paper is twofold. First, we suggest a taxonomy of various forms of knowledge contributions in Information Systems research. Second, we present contribution-focused guidelines for junior researchers. This study should be of interest to master students and junior researchers, as well as to their supervisors.