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The manuscript presents an exciting empirical study of an important and timely phenomenon. However, the reviewers, who are all experts in the area, fail to recognize a theoretical contribution on a par with what one would expect from an article in a premier journal such as EJIS.

If you have, you are not alone. In fact, one of the most common reasons for rejecting submissions at EJIS and other prestigious journals in our field is insufficient theoretical contribution (Venkatesh, 2006; Straub, 2009). It seems as though reviewers and editors sometimes use a vague reference to insufficient theoretical contribution as an indisputable reason for rejecting a submission that they do not like when they cannot quite put their finger on why they dislike it; a ‘polite brush-off for papers with various kinds of shortcomings’ as Hambrick (2007) eloquently puts it. To some extent, theoretical contribution, or, rather, lack thereof, seems to …