We discuss our findings in the following paragraphs. We then summarize the findings and draw conclusions about the nascent field of e-government research.
Year.Published
There was a slight but steady increase in the number of empirical articles about e- government published each year between when the first empirical article appeared and the end of 2004. The first two articles appeared in 1999, about four to five years after the governments began adopting e-government in earnest. This number increased to three in 2000, six in 2001, and 13 in 2002. Then, in 2003, 16 articles appeared, followed by 17 in 2004 (Table 1).
Type.of.Journal
There was a nearly equal distribution of articles by discipline of the journals in which the articles appeared. A slight majority (30, or 53%) were found in journals of the social sciences, while the remaining 27 (47%) were from journals in the in- formation systems, information technology, or related fields. Of the 27 articles in IT journals, 14 were found in Government Information Quarterly (GIQ)..The social
The Scholarly Lterature on E-Government
1999 2
2000 3
2001 6
2002 13
2003 16
2004 17
Table 1. Number of articles published by year
Social.Science.Journals 30
Social Science Computer Review 7
Public Administration Review 3
Public Performance & Management Review 3
Administration & Society 2
Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory 2
Administration 1
The American Review of Public Administration 1
Governance: An International Journal of Policy, Administration, and Institutions 1
International Journal of Public Administration 2
International Journal of Public Sector Management 2
New Media & Society 1
Political Communication 1
Public Administration 1
Public Administration and Development 1
Social Science Quarterly 1
State and Local Government Review 1
Information.Systems,.Information.Technology.and.related.Journals 27
Government Information Quarterly 14
Journal of Electronic Commerce in Organizations 5
Bulletin of Science, Technology and Society 1
Information & Management 1
Information and Communications Technology Law 1
International Journal of Electronic Business 1
Journal of Computer Information Systems 1
Journal of Computer Mediated Communication 1
Journal of Government Information 1
Technological Forecasting and Social Change 1
Table 2. Number of articles published by journal
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science journal with the most empirical e-government articles was Social Science Computer Review (SSCR), which had seven. The remaining articles were dispersed among 24 different journals (Table 2).
In addition to identifying the types of journals in which articles were published, examination of the table also reveals something about the relative prestige of the journals publishing e-government works. Arguably, only three top-ranked journals appear here: Public Administration Review, Journal of Public Administration Re- search and Theory, and Administration and Society. This suggests that e-government research is not yet seen as mainstream work in the top journals in either the social sciences or information sciences.
Type.of.Issue
Of the 57 articles, 40 (70%) were published in general issues of journals, while 17 (30%) came from one of eight special e-government issues (Table 3). Four of the eight special issues were in GIQ (issues 18:2, 18:4, 19:4, and 20:4), and two were in Social Science Computer Review (21:1 and 22:1). The others were in Public Performance and Management Review (26:4) and the Journal of Electronic Com- merce in Organizations (1:4). Clearly, the publication of e-government research has
Table 3. Number of articles by type of issue
General Issue 40
Special Issue (about e-government) 17 Note: One article appeared in a journal special issue devoted to public information systems management (not e-government). Therefore we did not include it among the special issues devoted to e-government.
Case Study 21
Data Set Analysis 19
Web Site Analysis 16
Theoretical 2
Table 4. Number of articles by type*
*Adds to 58 because one article was both a data set analysis and a Web site analysis
The Scholarly Lterature on E-Government
been jump-started by these special or focused issues about e-government. Without them, the number of articles published about e-government would likely have been considerably smaller. Nevertheless, the great majority of articles appeared in regular issues of these journals.
Type.of.Article
Our survey yielded some variety in terms of article type. Case studies (21, or 37%) were the most common, followed closely by analyses of large data sets (19, or 33%), and Web site analyses (16, or 28%). Only two articles were primarily theoretical in nature (2, or 4%). As we noted earlier, we eliminated theoretical articles that had no empirical content from consideration here. The two theoretical articles that we included in the survey, while mainly theoretical, contained empirical content with which to test or justify the theory. One article was designed as both a data set analysis and a Web site analysis, so the percentages here add to more than 100 (Table 4).
For the most part, the case study articles were not produced from well-designed case studies in the sense that Yin (2004) means, that is, methodologically-rigorous cases that will produce highly reliable results and can be replicated. These articles, instead, were based on what Grönlund (2004) calls “case stories”. Therefore, our use of the term “case study” should be considered rather generous as applied herein.
Type.of.Data
Survey data (24 articles, or 42%) and data obtained by content analyses of Web sites (22 articles, or 39%) were the most common types of data found in the articles.
Fourteen articles (25%) used only case data. One article, which we labeled as “other,”
Survey Data 24
Web Site Content 22
Case Data 14
Other 1
Table 5. Number of articles by type of data*
*Adds to 61 because four articles used both survey data and Web content data
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analyzed state laws mandating Web posting of government documents. Again, the percentages add to more than 100 because four articles used both survey and Web site analysis data (Table 5). As we noted above, the case data were developed largely from case stories, not rigorously designed case studies.
Discipline.of.Lead.Author
The majority of lead authors of the articles came from the social sciences (29, or 51%). The second-most common discipline for authorship was IT (17, or 30%), followed by communications (4, or 7%), and business (5, or 9%). E-government practitioners within the U.S. federal government wrote the two remaining articles (Table 6).
It is somewhat surprising that more than one and one-half as many articles were written by social scientists as by information and computer scientists. It is surpris- ing because funding for e-government research is not as readily available to social scientists as to information and computer scientists. Nevertheless, it was social scientists who published most of the empirical research in the field during this period. Information and computer scientists produced less than one-third of the articles about e-government.
Authors’.Location.of.Origin
The author(s) of 33 of the articles (58%) were based in locations in the U.S., while the author(s) of 19 of the articles (33%) were based outside of the U.S. Five addi- tional articles (9%) were written by multiple authors originating from both inside and outside the U.S. (Table 7).
Social Sciences 29
Information Technology 17
Communications 4
Business 5
Practitioner 2
Table 6. Number of articles by discipline of lead author
The Scholarly Lterature on E-Government
Formulate.Theory
The overwhelming majority of articles (43, or 75%) did not formulate new theory nor extend existing theory; only 14 (25%) did so (Table 8).
Test.of.Theory
Only 14 (25%) of the articles engaged in the testing of theory, while 43 (75%) did not (Table 9). It is important to note that of the 14 articles that formulated or extended theory, 12 tested the theory using empirical evidence. Two articles that formulated theory did not test it. Conversely, of the 14 articles that tested theory, two involved the testing of theory that was neither new nor extended from its original form.
The absence of theory development and testing may suggest works that are less sophisticated or rigorous or that are less well connected to prior relevant scholar- ship that should inform this new field. This may also be indicative of the newness of the field itself.
Formulate.Hypotheses.or.Research.Questions
In many academic disciplines, the formulation of hypotheses and research questions in a research article is a sign of research sophistication and methodological rigor.
Of the 57 articles which we examined in this survey, only 19 (33%) formulated hypotheses or research questions; 38 (67%) did not (Table 10).
Table 8. Did the author(s) formulate origi- nal theory or expand existing theory?
Yes 14
No 43
Table 9. Did the author(s) engage in the testing of original or existing theory?
Yes 14
No 43
United States 33
Outside of the U.S. 19
Both 5
Table 7. Number of articles by author(s) location of origin
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