The standard method for measuring the ihvaluelg of a researcher is to sum the total number of articles they have published in peer-reviewed journals. The research described in this document proposes the use of i.degrees-of- separationle (DOS) as another dimension that considers collaboration, along which we might assess the value of a researcher. The average DOS value for one node in a graph is the average of the number of steps in each of its shortest paths to each other node. The graph node with the smallest average DOS value is the node that is, on average, ivmost closely connectedl. to the rest of the nodes. When applied to academic research, an author can be considered a node, connected to other nodes through co-authored articles. The experiment described in this article uses DOS values to rank and compare with earlier rankings, those MIS researchers previously judged to be highly productive.