Information systems (IS), whether for corporations or governments, have improved tremendously in recent years thanks to the cooperation between academia and industry. Therefore, it is quite a surprise that the editors of this book note “long and vigorous debates over the perceived deepening alienation of the academic discipline of information systems from practice of and technical content of information systems.” As the title reveals, this book tries to provide new methods for IS research that can “bridge the communication gap between IS researchers and key stakeholders.”

The research methods proposed are data mining (eight chapters), data envelopment analysis (DEA) (three chapters), and value-focused thinking (VFT) (two chapters). As can be seen from the number of chapters allocated, DEA and VFT are relatively unknown to researchers.

One main purpose of this book is to bridge the gap between academic research and IS practitioners. However, I don’t see how the research methods have anything to do with that. For any problem there may be many feasible solutions. Different research methods produce different feasible solutions. It is hard to tell which one is better. It all depends on how you interpret the solution and how to apply it.

Another issue with the book is that the writing styles are too academic. There is a lot of jargon and ambiguous (perhaps grammatically incorrect) sentences. For example, the terms “post-positivism” and “postulate alternatives,” and sentences like: “Chapter 2 presents a short overview of the fundamental inferential logics of inquiry upon positivist and post-positivist social science inquiry methods have been developed” and “There is still misunderstanding of data analytic methods applying some of the four basic inferential mechanisms can contribute to the development of scientific theories.” Also, what is the purpose of listing Arabic numerals after the English, for example, “one (1)” and “three (3)” (on page 3)?

To conclude, the purpose of this book is unclear and its intended audience unspecified. I am afraid that it won’t help to advance IS research.