JMIS, a top-tier scholarly journal, invites the best papers addressing the components of the potential emergence of the Metaverse as a complement to and a potential replacement for the current Web. The Metaverse is envisioned as a collection of technologies and initiatives intended to create a next-generation Internet (Web3) that is highly immersive, persistent, in 3D, and based on the latest developments in extended reality (XR)—an umbrella term for virtual reality (VR), mixed reality (MR), and augmented reality (AR)—as supplemented by artificial intelligence (AI), cloud computing, quantum computing, and other supporting technologies.
Given the compelling and disruptive potential for the Metaverse to generate the Web3, several of the world’s leading technology companies are investing tens of billions of dollars on related software and hardware to foster this market, including Meta (famously renamed from “Facebook” as an all-in bet on the Metaverse), Microsoft, Snapchat, Amazon, NVIDIA, Epic Games, Apple, among others. This is an opportune time for researchers to examine what can be learned from the past failed efforts of AR/VR platforms such as Second Life and over-hyped failed AR technologies like Google Glass, and to examine the many more successes that are occurring, perhaps more quietly, with XR (i.e., VR, MR, AR) in education, manufacturing, gaming, branding, healthcare, retailing, logistics, aerospace and defense, architecture, advertising, and athletics.
It is these successes and disruptive business models that are likely to form what will be known as the Metaverse. However, this is no minor feat, just as the Internet as we know it took decades to develop. To create a truly persistent 3D, virtual, and immersive Metaverse, there will need to be further advances in supporting hardware (goggles, headsets, sensors), and an exponential increase in computing power, storage, and memory. If the Metaverse is to succeed it must be based on making things better for people than the status quo, and thus must foster innovative business models that are profitable.
This is the time for scientists to work with policy makers, companies, and not-for-profit organizations to break the current social media models and envision a Metaverse that can best serve collective global needs. Accordingly, we are pleased to announce a Special Issue (SI) on this subject at JMIS. Importantly, information systems (IS) researchers have long contributed to the foundational research that can serve as building blocks for the Metaverse, including but not limited to XR (i.e., VR, AR, MR), avatars, agents, gamification, and gaming. Meanwhile, IS researchers are presently leading key research on the Metaverse itself.
Our strong preference is for contributions of original and rigorous theory-guided behavioral or empirical data around information systems artifacts that inform design, practice, research, and the products and foundations of theory of meaningful aspects of the Metaverse. We seek any methodological approaches that are legitimate and rigorous, and that can shed light on important phenomena related to the Metaverse. However, we are not seeking review papers or those that focus on discussions of further research alone.