Writing Style (misq-writing-style)

When to trigger

• Prose is jargon-heavy, passive, or buries the IS contribution
• Citations/headings do not match APA 7th or the MISQ Style Guide
• The manuscript exceeds the category page limit
• You are finalizing the first page (title, abstract, keywords)

Write for an interdisciplinary IS audience

MISQ readers come from all four traditions — behavioral, design science, economics, and organizational. A behavioral reader may not share an econometrician's vocabulary, and vice versa. Define tradition-specific terms on first use, state the IT artifact and the contribution in plain language up front, and avoid in-group jargon that only one subfield will parse. Front-load the argument: by the end of the introduction the reader should know the IS phenomenon, the artifact's role, the approach, and the contribution.

Apply the MISQ Style Guide and APA 7th

• Citations/references: APA 7th edition. Note the MISQ convention that in-text citations lead with the cited information, not the author name — e.g., "... the best team in the nation (Smith & Jones, 1997)" rather than "Smith and Jones (1997) found...". Reconcile your reference manager's output to this.
• Headings: major heads bold, all caps, centered; subheads in title case.
• First page: title, abstract, and 5–10 specific keywords. (The exact abstract word cap is 待核实; keep the abstract tight and concrete.)
• File: prepared as a Word (.doc/.docx) document per the submission guidelines.

Respect the page limit while editing

The page limit counts everything (text, tables, figures, references, appendices) and over-length manuscripts are returned. Editing for style here doubles as editing for length: cut redundancy, fold overlapping paragraphs, and tighten methods boilerplate so the contribution — not filler — fills the budget.

Keep anonymity in the prose

MISQ uses double-anonymous review and the manuscript must contain no identifying information. While polishing, scrub self-identifying citations ("in our prior work [Author, 2021]"), acknowledgements, grant numbers, and identifying dataset/site names from the main file.

Checklist

• Contribution and IT artifact stated plainly in the introduction
• Tradition-specific jargon defined; readable across the four IS traditions
• APA 7th references; in-text citations lead with the information, not the author
• Major heads bold/all caps/centered; subheads title case
• First page has title, abstract, and 5–10 specific keywords
• Within the category page limit; no identifying information in the file

Anti-patterns

• A buried contribution that surfaces only in the discussion.
• Author-led citation phrasing throughout, against MISQ's lead-with-the-information style.
• Subfield jargon that locks out three of the four IS traditions.
• Trimming substance instead of redundancy to meet the page limit.

Style execution pass for MIS Quarterly

Use this as a second-pass capability check. First lock the IS phenomenon, artifact/platform, theory mechanism, design or empirical warrant, and managerial implication; then test whether the manuscript addresses information-systems reviewers who expect strong IS theory, digital artifact or platform grounding, and evidence with organizational consequence.

• Primary move: Rewrite the opening and transitions so the venue-level claim, evidence object, and contribution are visible before technical detail.
• Decision ledger: return claim / evidence / blocker / next edit rows so the next pass can patch the manuscript directly.
• Neighbor test: compare against Information Systems Research for quantitative IS, Journal of Management Information Systems for applied systems, Management Science for broader OR/MS; if the neighboring outlet has the stronger audience claim, recommend re-routing before polishing.
• Verification floor: before submission-ready advice, re-open resources/official-source-map.md for volatile rules and name the one unresolved fact that could change the recommendation.

Output format

【Front-loading】contribution + artifact in intro: yes/fix
【Audience readability】jargon defined across traditions: yes/fix
【APA7 / MISQ style】citations/headings/keywords: pass/issues
【Length & anonymity】within limit; no identifiers: yes/fix
【Next step】misq-submission