The International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS) invites nominations for the ACM SIGMIS Doctoral Dissertation Award Competition 2026. We are seeking outstanding doctoral dissertations from around the world in the field of Information Systems that have been completed in the time period from July 1, 2025, to June 30, 2026. The competition is sponsored by SIGMIS, the ACM Special Interest Group on MIS.

Nominations should be submitted no earlier than midnight (WEST – Lisbon) August 5, 2026, and no later than 23:59 (EDT – New York), September 16, 2026. The candidate’s Ph.D. advisor or department chair should submit the nomination. Only one nomination can be made from an institution.

The ACM SIGMIS Doctoral Dissertation Competition is chaired by Chrisanthi Avgerou, Christy Cheung, Rajiv Sabherwal, and the judges include the faculty members who participated at the ICIS 2025 doctoral consortium.

Questions about this competition may be addressed to the co-chairs.

SUBMISSION PROCESS

The language of all submitted materials must be English. The following 3 items, integrated in one submission document, are required:

1. A paper derived from the dissertation.

The initial screening of submissions will be based on a purposefully written paper designed to highlight the significance and contribution of the research. If the dissertation consists of several essays, the paper should tie the essays in a coherent manner. The paper is expected to cover the whole dissertation research and should address:

(i) the motivation for the study
(ii) the research objective / questions
(iii) substance about how the research is conducted (i.e., theory development, method, and research design, as appropriate).
(iv) key findings
(v) contribution and implications of the research.

Submissions where the paper only covers part of the dissertation research or is one of several essays from the dissertation will not be considered.

The paper should be:

• • Single-authored (i.e., the paper must be written by the student)
  • No more than 4,000 words in length, excluding the cover page, tables, graphs, references, and an abstract of no more than 200 words;
  • Formatted according to the MIS Quarterly manuscript guidelines;
  • Written in English;
  • Preceded by a cover page that includes a title and the student’s name, institution, and email address.

2. The complete dissertation.

3. A letter from the student’s dissertation advisor or department chair. The letter should attest that: the paper is based on the student’s dissertation; the dissertation has met all requirements for graduation with a doctoral degree and has been successfully completed during the time period from July 1, 2025 to June 30, 2026; the paper and the dissertation are regarded by the dissertation committee as being representative of the best level of their department’s doctoral work; the paper derived from the dissertation meets the following criteria: the paper is the work of the student under the guidance of the thesis supervisor (s) name (s); it represents high research standards, in terms of theory and methodology; it makes an original and substantive contribution to the understanding, development, or use of information systems.

Submissions should adhere to the following guidelines:

• • The candidate’s Ph.D. advisor or department chair should submit the nomination.
  • All three items must be integrated into a document and submitted.
  • The package should be received before 23:59 EDT September 16, 2026.

*Nominations should be submitted no earlier than midnight (EDT) August 5, 2026, and no later than 23:59 (EDT), September 16, 2026. The candidate’s Ph.D. advisor or department chair should submit the nomination. Only one nomination can be made from an institution.

Late arrivals will not be considered.