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The Janus Effect of Generative AI: Charting the Path for Responsible Conduct of Scholarly Activities in Information Systems

Summary

An ISR editorial by the senior-editor team arguing that generative AI in scholarly activities has a Janus character — promising because of genuine capability gains, but easily mischaracterised. The authors note that academic conversations have already "moved beyond bemoaning the decline of learning to thinking more critically about how scholars will and should use generative AI tools," and ask whether such tools can really replace accumulated experience or insight even as they automate aspects of writing.

Contribution

The editorial sets a responsible-conduct agenda for IS scholarship in the generative-AI era — flagging concerns about the misuse, opacity, and contextual misreading of these tools — and positions IS as the discipline responsible for understanding both the technology and the meaning-making practices academics build around it. It is the acknowledged predecessor to the 2025 ISR editorial by an overlapping author team (Gopal et al. 2025).

Method

Editorial; conceptual argument addressed to the IS research community, synthesising current debate rather than presenting new empirical evidence.

Relevance to RISE

ISR editorial — the direct predecessor to 1. The same author team (Susarla, Gopal, Thatcher, Sarker) sketches the responsible-conduct agenda that the 2025 ISR editorial then operationalizes for IS research methods.

Critique / open questions

Like any editorial, the piece is programmatic; concrete policy or evaluation criteria are not provided, and the "Janus" framing risks collapsing distinct issues (capability, governance, epistemics) into a single binary opportunity/risk register.

Key quotes

"Academic conversations about generative AI have moved beyond bemoaning the decline of learning to thinking more critically about how scholars will and should use generative AI tools."

"Although they may be able to help automate aspects of writing or serve as an aid to the creative process, can they replace our accumulated experience or insights into the problems with which we grapple?"

  1. Gopal, R. D. et al. (2025). Inventing with machines: Generative AI and the evolving landscape of IS research. Information Systems Research, 36(4), 1949–1967. https://doi.org/10.1287/isre.2025.editorial.v36.n4 ↩