The IS Core - VII: Towards Information Systems as a Science of Meta-Artifacts

The paper argues that we should emphasize more the nature of Information Systems as an applied, engineering-like discipline that develops various "meta-artifacts" to support the development of IS artifacts. Building such meta-artifacts is a complementary approach to the "theory-with-practical-implications" type of research. The primacy assigned to theory and research method has effectively excluded constructive research of building meta-artifacts from the major IS journals. The paper also claims that information systems as a category of IT artifacts, and especially the focus on IS development, can help to distinguish the IS discipline from its sister and reference disciplines.