Working on your first scientific research project, preparing a PhD thesis, and writing your first journal article are exciting times and experiences. To make this time productive and avoid discouraging mistakes, a beginner needs good guidance. This book serves that purpose very well.

What sets this book apart from many textbooks dealing with research methods is that it focuses on the entire research process from start to finish and provides a guide not only for the methods, but for the “process of learning the life of a researcher.”

This well-written and easy-to-read book consists of eight chapters, divided into three parts. Each chapter ends with a list of references for further reading on each subject, totaling 200 in all.

The first part presents basic principles of research, with an introduction to the book and an overview of systems research and essential concepts.

Part 2 deals with the research process and methodology. It explains the notion of theory and focuses on research methods with an overview of quantitative, qualitative, and mixed approaches.

Part 3 is an introduction to writing and publishing research articles. It explains the publishing process and key decisions that are made by researchers over the publication life cycle. The author describes an approach to structuring a research article and provides an overview of essential sections, including the introduction, background, research model and method, results, and discussion. Practical recommendations are offered on such issues as principles of collaboration and co-authorship in writing an article, selecting a target outlet (journal) for submitting an article, and handling reviews and revisions. This part ends with a chapter on ethical considerations in research, with some specific examples pertaining to the information systems area.

The book is intended primarily for doctoral students and young scholars in the field of information systems. However, it will be useful for a much broader audience for two reasons: first, the author’s definition of information systems is rather inclusive; and, second, the book is not concerned with technical aspects of the information systems. The latter point may leave the expectations of some readers unfulfilled.

The author’s recommendations can be trusted and treated with due attention. Recker is a professor at Queensland University of Technology (Brisbane, Australia). He is a well-published scholar with over 100 refereed papers and more than 1,400 citations.

Some of his advice should be taken critically. For example, Recker suggests that papers in conference proceedings are far less important than those in journals: “Generally speaking, however, conference proceedings do not matter”; “the best rule for academics in information systems is that you need to publish in journals, not conferences!” This sounds a bit blunt and requires more rationale than is provided.

Readers who are interested in research methodology can find additional information on the subject [1,2].