Special issue published: "Multiagent Systems Engineering and Applications"

International Journal of Agent-Oriented Software Engineering 6(3/4) 2018

• Augmenting agent computational environments with quantitative reasoning modules and customisable bridge rules
• Automating failure detection in cognitive agent programs
• Protocol and role: abstraction mechanisms in agent oriented programming languages
• Experimental analysis of the effect of filtering perceptions in BDI agents
• A multi-agent platform for the deployment of ambient systems
• Improving flexibility and dependability of remote patient monitoring with agent-oriented approaches

Free sample articles newly available from International Journal of Automation and Control

The following sample articles from the International Journal of Automation and Control are now available here for free:

• Modelling, stability analysis and computational aspects of nonlinear fuzzy PID controllers using Mamdani minimum inference
• Load frequency control of multi-area interconnected thermal power system: artificial intelligence-based approach
• Adaptive fuzzy control strategy for greenhouse micro-climate
• Discrete-time sliding mode control of a class of linear uncertain saturated systems
• Fuzzy fractional sliding mode observer design for a class of nonlinear dynamics of the cancer disease
• A Takagi-Sugeno fuzzy control of induction motor drive: experimental results
• Adaptive nonlinear observer augmented by radial basis neural network for a nonlinear sensorless control of an induction machine
• A novel 4-D hyperchaotic system with two quadratic nonlinearities and its adaptive synchronisation

Special issue published: "Home Imaginings: Travel, Place and Belonging"

International Journal of Tourism Anthropology 6(4) 2018

• A practice of togetherness: home imaginings in the life of location-independent families
• Deciphering movement and stasis: touring musicians and their ambivalent imaginings of home and belonging
• Home away from home: landscape as a mediator between place and belonging in the peripheral areas of the Marche region in Italy
• Lifestyle mobility: shifting conception of home in modern China
• Cultures on tour: the roots and routes of a British museum exhibition on Assam
• The big house as home: roots tourism and slavery in the USA

Research pick: Eurozone inequalities - "Inequality and economic growth across countries of the Eurozone"

Many nations have recovered to some extent from the economic crash of 2008 and the subsequent financial downturn although on the whole that recovery has been sluggish at best. Tatyana Boikova of the Department of Business Administration, at the Baltic International Academy and Aleksandrs Dahs of the Centre for European and Transition Studies, at the University of Latvia, both in Riga, Latvia, have now demonstrated that this recovery has been very uneven across the European Union’s economic and social area.

Writing in the International Journal of Sustainable Economy, the researchers point out that studies of growth and development do not find a solid relationship between income inequality and the rate of economic growth and there are discrepancies that make interpreting the results and seeing the bigger empirical and theoretical picture difficult.

The team has now explored in detail the impact of income inequality, poverty, and wealth on the rate of economic growth in the Eurozone. “We find that the effect of income inequality on economic growth is statistically insignificant, whereas poverty and savings have a negative, statistically significant effect on growth, while the effect of financial assets is positive and statistically significant,” the team reports. They have also seen a negative, statistically significant effect of consumption on growth and demonstrated that the dynamics of the link between inequality and growth across countries do not take the inverted-U shape curve for all observations and the average values per country in the Eurozone.

“Given the still-sluggish recovery after the financial crisis, specific features of economic cycles within each country should be taken as the basis of the macroeconomic regulation of the Eurozone,” the team concludes. They add that that effort must be aimed at encouraging business investment in order to enhance smart competitiveness and to create long-term economic growth.

Boikova, T. and Dahs, A. (2018) ‘Inequality and economic growth across countries of the Eurozone‘, Int. J. Sustainable Economy, Vol. 10, No. 4, pp.315-339.

Special issue published: "Applying a Pluralist Approach to Informing Policy"

International Journal of Pluralism and Economics Education 9(4) 2018

• Choices under epistemic pluralism in economics
• Economic pluralism: the role of narrative
• A pluralistic approach to public policy: the case of the OECD's New Approaches to Economic Challenges initiative
• Taking a leap towards a real world macroeconomics teaching
• The importance of cross-fertilisation between economics and sociology to investigating monetary issues: the case of Swiss WIR currency

New Editor for International Journal of Entrepreneurial Venturing

Nivedita Agarwal from Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg in Germany has been appointed to take over joint editorship of the International Journal of Entrepreneurial Venturing, together with Terrence Brown from the KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden, from 1 January, 2019. She is succeeding Alexander Brem, whom the publisher wants to thank for his four years of dedication to the further development of the journal.

Research pick: Photo mining - "User similarity-based gender-aware travel location recommendation by mining geotagged photos"

Take nothing but memories, leave nothing but footprints…that well-worn traveller’s mantra might be modernised to say “take nothing but photos”. Indeed, modern travellers take and share billions of photos every year thanks to the advent of smartphones, digital cameras, and social media. The digital footprints they leave offer a hidden treasure of geotagged information about popular and not-so-popular tourist destinations.

Now, Zhenxing Xu, Ling Chen, Haodong Guo, Mingqi Lv, and Gencai Chen of the College of Computer Science, at Zhejiang University, in Hangzhou, China, have investigated how data-mining online photo collections and their geotags might be used to develop recommendations for other travellers. Until now, most data mining of tourist photographs has focused on time and location and ignored the context of the images. Xu and colleagues have added another layer to a recommendation algorithm

“[Our system] uses an entropy-based mobility measure to classify geotagged photos into tourist photos or non-tourist photos,” they explain. “Secondly, it conducts gender recognition based on face detection from tourist photos,” they add. “Thirdly, it builds a gender-aware profile of travel locations and users and finally, it recommends personalised travel locations considering both user gender and similarity.”

The team has tested the approach with a dataset of geotagged photos from eleven popular tourist destinations across China. “Experimental results show that our approach has the potential to improve the performance of travel location recommendation,” they conclude.

Xu, Z., Chen, L., Guo, H., Lv, M. and Chen, G. (2018) ‘User similarity-based gender-aware travel location recommendation by mining geotagged photos‘, Int. J. Embedded Systems, Vol. 10, No. 5, pp.356-365.

Special issue published: "Dynamics of and on Networks"

International Journal of Computational Economics and Econometrics 8(3/4) 2018

• Innovation cooperation in East and West Germany: a study on the regional and technological impact
• Structural characteristics of knowledge exchange in innovation networks
• Geographical dynamics of knowledge flows: descriptive statistics on inventor network distance and patent citation graphs in the pharmaceutical industry
• Endogenous dynamics of innovation networks in the German automotive industry: analysing structural network evolution using a stochastic actor-oriented approach
• How to find a needle in a haystack?: a theory-driven approach to social network analysis of regional energy transitions
• Growth and collapse: an agent-based banking model of endogenous leverage cycles and financial contagion
• Knowledge diffusion in formal networks: the roles of degree distribution and cognitive distance

Free sample articles newly available from International Journal of Business and Systems Research

The following sample articles from the International Journal of Business and Systems Research are now available here for free:

• Developing a disaster risk management index for Latin American countries
• Considerations for avoiding commoditisation in the automotive industry - analysis of factors that enhance customisation
• Connections between personality traits and work experiences
• Innovation and strategic marketing - the key factors: a literature review on Indian micro small medium enterprises
• Let the games begin and go on
• New approach to select materials using MADM tools
• An application of fuzzy VIKOR method on evaluation of the university students' preferences on selected Turkish banks
• Costs function assessment: an empirical business analytics approach for decisional purposes

Special issue published: "Next Generation Technologies in Computing, Communication and Signal Processing"

International Journal of Intelligent Systems Design and Computing 2(2) 2018

• Web phishing detection: feature selection using rough sets and ant colony optimisation
• Selection of energy efficient path by applying particle swarm optimisation method in wireless sensor networks
• The detrended fluctuation and cross-correlation analysis of EEG signals
• Performance analysis of VoIP under the effect of interference and during conference call in WLAN network using OPNET modeller
• Identification and classification of historical Kannada handwritten document images using LBP features

Research pick: Trusting the web - "The case for HTTPS: measuring overhead and impact of certificate authorities"

Many people who use the web are concerned about privacy, but they are also concerned about web page load times. If improving privacy led to slower websites there might be some attrition that would turn people away from more secure sites.

Now, a new study from Eric Chan-Tin of the Department of Computer Science, at Loyola University Chicago, in Illinois, and Rakesh Ravishankar of the Computer Science Department, at Oklahoma State University, in Stillwater, USA, reveals that the average time taken to load a web page encrypted with standard certification techniques is a mere a few fractions of a second slower (12 per cent slower the load time of an unencrypted page. They explain that a standard, unencrypted page prefixed with http:// takes 2.6 seconds to load compared to the 2.9 seconds of an encrypted https:// page (the s after the http indicates to the browser and to users that the page is encrypted using TLS, transport layer security).

Given the benefits of encryption and this small compromise coupled with the fact that many browsers now flag sites that are not encrypted as not being secure, and search engines lowering the ranking of the latter, there is a need to push for https to be the default instead of http.
There have been problems with some of the certification authorities in recent years where the very core of the encryption system has been accessed by hackers. However, the team suggests that the strength of ten trusted authorities would allow 80 percent of the web to be protected. They are not advocating the use of those ten specifically but do point out that with those and an additional roster, it should be possible to secure almost the whole of the web.

Chan-Tin, E. and Ravishankar, R. (2018) ‘The case for HTTPS: measuring overhead and impact of certificate authorities‘, Int. J. Security and Networks, Vol. 13, No. 4, pp.261-269.

Special issue published: "Understanding the Advancing of Developing Economies"

Journal for Global Business Advancement 11(3) 2018

• Beverage consumption and seasonal change effect
• Corporate governance as a suggested solution for family business sustainability problem
• The impact of organisational culture on performance
• The influence of organisational and technological factors on BI adoption in the telecommunication industry across the Middle East and Africa
• Carving a service quality niche for Sukuk: a case study of National Bonds in the UAE
• Testing the weak form of efficiency of the stock markets in Gulf Cooperation Council countries

International Journal of Innovation and Sustainable Development to invite expanded papers from 3rd International Conference on Science and Sustainable Development for potential publication

Extended versions of papers presented at the 3rd International Conference on Science and Sustainable Development (6-8 May 2019, Ota, Ogun State, Nigeria) will be invited for review and potential publication by the International Journal of Innovation and Sustainable Development.

Special issue published: "Spring Conference of Korean Ceramic Society 2017"

International Journal of Nanotechnology 15(6/7) 2018

• Dependence of microwave dielectric properties on ceramics filler in wollastonite glass-ceramics
• Biomorphic carbon-nanotube composites synthesised by chemical vapour deposition
• Effect of hardness and morphology of potassium titanate on frictional wear characteristics of brake pads
• Enhancement of green quantum dot light-emitting diodes with Au NPs in the hole injection layer
• Methods for distinguishing Mott transitions from Anderson transitions
• Reproducibility control in photosensitivity of in-situ synthesised cadmium sulphide nanowire photosensors
• Synthesis of nanosized zirconium diboride powder with high purity via simply purified boron carbide
• Fabrication and thermoelectric properties of NaxCoO2 by polymerised complex method
• Fabrication of single-phase tungsten carbide laminae from multi-walled carbon nanotubes using high direct current pulse
• Effects of microstructure design and feedstock species in the bond coat on thermal stability of thermal barrier coatings
• Improvement of densification uniformity of carbon/silicon carbide composites during chemical vapour infiltration
• Fabrication and performance of an agar-aerogel composite membrane for polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cells
• Structural characteristics and microwave dielectric properties of Mg2Ti1-x(Mg1/3B2/3)xO4 (B = Nb5+, Ta5+) ceramics
• Methyltrimethoxysilane silica aerogel composite with carboxyl-functionalised multi-wall carbon nanotubes
• Optimisation of hydrothermal process for the fabrication of TiO2 nanowire matrix chip for laser desorption ionisation mass spectrometry
• Effects of interfacial energy and annealing on the microstructure of NiTe2 thin films on glass substrate
• Effect of lithium salt on the properties of PEO based hybrid solid electrolyte for high safety lithium-ion batteries
• Nanowire length and diameter dependent electrical and optical properties of transparent conductive silver nanowires films

Research pick: Passwords you don’t type - "Graphical passwords for older computer users"

Textual passwords remain the most common and cumbersome format for logins to online services. For many user groups, such as the visually impaired and the elderly, this can be a problem. Now, a team in the USA has developed an alternative, graphical password system to circumvent some of the barriers to accessibility for the older internet user.

Nancy Carter, Cheng Li, Qun Li, and Jennifer Stevens of the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, Ed Novak of Franklin & Marshall College, in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and Zhengrui Qin of Northwest Missouri State University, in Maryville, Missouri, USA, explain that not all users have sufficient cognitive skills nor manual dexterity to readily easily create, recall, and enter strong text-based passwords. The new system is based on embedding familiar facial images among random unfamiliar images so that a user with stymied abilities might still be able to use a password to login.

Tests with a group of over-60s showed that the graphical password technique can have recall rate of 97%, shows password “entropy” superior to a short PIN, and authentication time comparable to that possible with short text passwords. The system, as it stands, is particularly suited to users with limited manual dexterity who do not need the additional barrier of having to type convoluted text-based passwords when clicking with a mouse on images or tapping a touchscreen would suffice for many applications.

Carter, N., Li, C., Li, Q., Stevens, J.A., Novak, E. and Qin, Z. (2018) ‘Graphical passwords for older computer users‘, Int. J. Security and Networks, Vol. 13, No. 4, pp.211-227.

International Journal of Digital Culture and Electronic Tourism to invite expanded papers from International Forum on Knowledge Assets Dynamics (IFKAD) 2019 for potential publication

Extended versions of papers presented at the International Forum on Knowledge Assets Dynamics (5-7 June 2019, Matera, Italy) will be invited for review and potential publication by the International Journal of Digital Culture and Electronic Tourism.

International Journal of Business Continuity and Risk Management to invite expanded papers from Scientia Academia Conference on Management, Entrepreneurship, and Social Sciences (SAC-MESS 2019) for potential publication

Extended versions of papers presented at the Scientia Academia Conference on Management, Entrepreneurship, and Social Sciences (6-7 April 2019, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia) will be invited for review and potential publication by the International Journal of Business Continuity and Risk Management.

Special issue published: "Advances on Multibody Systems and Mechatronics"

International Journal of Mechanisms and Robotic Systems 4(4) 2018

• Innovative development of a spherical parallel robot for upper limb rehabilitation
• Synthesis of precision flexible mechanisms using screw theory and beam constraints
• Matroid application to self-aligning mechanisms: enumeration and analysis
• Maximum isotropic force capability maps in redundant planar cooperative systems
• A simplified model for friction compensation in precise feed drives
• Global optimisation analysis for a planar redundant serial manipulator
• Method and clinical validation of a kinetostatic model of the human knee
• Synthesis of epicyclic gear trains with one and two degrees of freedom from kinematic chains belonging to minimal sets
• Dynamic synthesis of energy-efficient mechanisms
• Robotic bat mechanism design

Special issue published: "Emotion and Decision Making in a Connected Society"

International Journal of the Digital Human 2(1/2) 2018

• ESPY: assistive aid to visually impaired for desktop access
• Support system to allow powered wheelchair users to comfortably climb steps in their chairs
• Comparison of implicit and explicit preference toward multiple colour combinations
• Cyber-physical motion of digital human model for connected society
• Influences of visual non-verbal information on feeling and degree of transmission in presentations
• Remote collaborative learning support system using avatars with facial expressions
• Low cost 3D foot scan with Kinect
• A landmark-based 3D parametric foot model for footwear customisation
• Three-dimensional shape analysis and anthropometry: a case study

Newly announced journal: International Journal of Big Data Management

Big data research has attracted considerable academic attention. However, simplifying the data management structure in order to generate optimum insights from large amounts of data is an ongoing management concern. In this context, the International Journal of Big Data Management encourages research at the intersection of strategic management and big data analytics to understand how large amounts of data could systematically and strategically be managed, in order to improve the practical implications of data for managerial decision making, along with socio-economic development.

Research pick: Plankton ID - "Intelligent plankton image classification with deep learning"

Deep learning has been applied to the problem of intelligent plankton classification, which could have important implications for understanding marine ecosystems, the food chain, and the environmental impact of oceanic microbes on climate.

Hussein Al-Barazanchi and Shawn Wang of California State University, in Fullerton and Abhishek Verma of New Jersey City University, Jersey City, USA, discuss the importance of plankton in the International Journal of Computational Vision and Robotics, and outline their intelligent plankton image classification.

Plankton is an umbrella term for any organism that lives in a large body of water, such as an ocean and cannot propel itself against the current. It is an extremely diverse group that encompasses bacteria, archaea, algae, protozoa and any drifting or floating animals that inhabit large water columns. Plankton is a source of food for fish and other marine animals. Moreover, the distribution of plankton underpins the persistence of marine ecosystems as well as having an impact on chemical concentrations of the oceans and the Earth’s atmosphere.

The team explains that because of the diversity of plankton in terms of their nature, size and shape, accurate classification is daunting and the mixed quality of images collected for different types of plankton and species makes this problem even more challenging.

The team’s new intelligent machine learning system based on convolutional neural networks (CNN) for plankton image classification does not depend on features engineering and can be efficiently extended to encompass new classes. Tests on standard images show the new approach to be more accurate than even state-of-the-art tools available today.

Al-Barazanchi, H., Verma, A. and Wang, S.X. (2018) ‘Intelligent plankton image classification with deep learning‘, Int. J. Computational Vision and Robotics, Vol. 8, No. 6, pp.561-571.

Research pick: Emission control - "Climate change mitigation: evidences from the European scenario"

The European Union, EU, is purportedly fighting anthropogenic climate change through its carbon emissions targets. Writing in the International Journal of Management and Network Economic, researchers in Italy point out that: “By 2050, the EU aims to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 80%-95% compared with 1990 levels. New objectives up to 2030 provide for a 40% reduction of GHG emissions and an increase of 27% for renewables and energy efficiency.”

In their paper, the team of Idiano D’Adamo and Domenico Schettini of the University of L’ Aquila, Michela Miliacca of the University of Rome Tor Vergata, describe their research aims as twofold. First, they present the inventory data of greenhouse gas emissions, final energy consumption, the share of renewable energy, and other data and compare achievements so far with the 2020 targets. Secondly, they look for a correspondence between the increasing number of certified companies and positive results with respect to mitigation.

The team adds that regulatory obligations and a growing awareness of climate change have led companies to adopt systems voluntarily with a view to improving environmental management and/or energy management. The benefit to such companies is not only one of an improved public image but also the improved competitiveness that ensues.

Every member of the EU plays a key role in addressing the major issue of the day: climate change. Eighteen member states have achieved the goals set, but the others are yet to do so, and some are performing once than they were almost three decades ago. It seems that economic stagnation leads to under-achieving in this context. The team will next look at other major economic regions of the world to see whether or not their targets are being approached.

D’Adamo, I., Miliacca, M. and Schettini, D. (2018) ‘Climate change mitigation: evidences from the European scenario‘, Int. J. Management and Network Economics, Vol. 4, No. 2, pp.95-114

Research pick: Your web browser is never private - "A comparative forensic analysis of privacy-enhanced web browsers and private browsing modes of common web browsers"

If you access the world wide web, you have used a web browser. But, how many of us consider our privacy when doing so, the information and data being harvested by the browser and the companies and organisations with whom we connect online? Moreover, even if one uses a so-called “incognito” mode, data is still being transferred back and forth to the various computers in the chain.

Ryan Gabet of Cisco Systems, Inc., in Morrisville, North Carolina, USA and Kathryn Seigfried-Spellar and Marcus Rogers of the Department of Computer and Information Technology, at Purdue University, in West Lafayette, Indiana, USA, have carried out a forensic analysis of web browsers that claim to be “privacy enhanced” and the “private browsing” modes of common web browsers. The privacy enhanced browsers in their study are: Dooble, Comodo Dragon, and Epic and the standard web browsers tested in private mode were: Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, and Mozilla Firefox. They also looked at how well two forensic tools used by law enforcement FTK and Autopsy were at recovering data and information from these browsers.

Fundamentally, all of the browsers performed about the same as each other in so-called private mode against FTK, which was the better tool at retrieving information. “This study did not produce sufficient evidence to conclude enhanced privacy browsers do indeed provide better privacy,” the team reports in the International Journal of Electronic Security and Digital Forensics.

That said, the team qualifies their conclusion for privacy-minded individuals who wish to search the web. They point out that Firefox in private browsing mode and Dooble produced the fewest number of recoverable browser “artefacts”; which might be of use in law enforcement. The might also be of use in espionage or other malicious application. Browsers based on the Chromium platform produced artefacts as well as viewable data as did Microsoft Edge.

Gabet, R.M., Seigfried-Spellar, K.C. and Rogers, M.K. (2018) ‘A comparative forensic analysis of privacy-enhanced web browsers and private browsing modes of common web browsers’, Int. J. Electronic Security and Digital Forensics, Vol. 10, No. 4, pp.356–371

Special issue published: "Artificial Intelligent Techniques Applied to the Study of Engineering Applications: Part I"

International Journal of Reasoning-based Intelligent Systems 10(3/4) 2018

• Exploiting ontology to map requirements derived from informal descriptions
• Application of mutation inspired constrained factor PSO considering voltage stability and losses by locating and rating TCSC during N-1 contingency
• Survey on data analytics techniques in healthcare using IOT platform
• Octagonal picture languages
• FlowForensic: flow rule enforcement for control plane attacks in software defined networking
• Trusted computing in social cloud
• Energy efficient data compression and aggregation technique for wireless sensor networks [TELOSB MOTES]
• An intelligent neuro-genetic framework for effective intrusion detection
• Cluster-based EA-PATM protocol for energy consumption in hierarchical WSNs
• Real time implementation of multivariable centralised FOPID controller for TITO process
• A novel feature extraction approach for tumour detection and classification of data based on hybrid SP classifier
• Design and implementation of energy efficient reconfigurable networks (WORN-DEAR) for BAN in IOT environment (BIOT)
• A high performance cognitive framework (SIVA - self intelligent versatile and adaptive) for heterogenous architecture in IOT environment
• Encrypted image-based data hiding technique using elliptic curve ElGamal cryptography
• Design of CMOS full subtractor using 10T for object detection application
• An efficient raindrop parameter estimation using image processing
• Grouping of users based on user navigation behaviour using supervised association rule tree mining
• Integrated cloud-based risk assessment model for continuous integration
• Fuzzy logics associated with neural networks in intelligent control for better world
• A survey on resource allocation strategies in cloud
• Mitigation of DDoS threat to service attainability in cloud premises

Free sample articles newly available from International Journal of Design Engineering

The following sample articles from the International Journal of Design Engineering are now available here for free:

• Effects of microbus front structure on pedestrian head injury
• Vibration buckling and fracture analysis of a cracked cylindrical shell
• Synchronisation methods in graph-based knowledge representation for large-scale design process
• Towards generative systems for supporting product design

Special issue published: "Business Models, Trust and Influence in Social Media and Web-Based Communities"

International Journal of Web Based Communities 14(4) 2018

• Views versus subscriptions: which one matters to a YouTuber's monetisation success?
• Long live friendship? Relationships among friendship, trust and brand loyalty: a study of Starbucks
• Online social networking services and spam detection approaches in opinion mining - a review
• Significant effects of online news on vote choice: a review
• Maturity in decision-making: a method to measure e-participation systems in virtual communities
• Patients' learning in cyberspace: a thematic analysis of patient-patient discussions in a chronic illness Facebook page

Research pick: Popularity contest - "What makes you popular: beauty, personality or intelligence?"

Researchers in Italy and the USA have asked the provocative question: “What makes you popular: beauty, personality or intelligence?”. They present their answer in the International Journal of Entrepreneurship and Small Business.

Andrea Fronzetti Colladon, Elisa Battistoni, and Agostino La Bella of the Department of Enterprise Engineering, at the University of Rome Tor Vergata, and colleagues Francesca Grippa of Northeastern University, Boston, and Peter Gloor of the MIT Center for Collective Intelligence, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA, explored the determinants of popularity within friendship and advice networks. They investigated the effects of personality traits (such as extraversion, conscientiousness, neuroticism), self-monitoring, creativity, intelligence, energy, and beauty influence the development of friendships among some 200 college students.

Their results are perhaps not unsurprising: “Our results indicate that physical attractiveness is a key to develop both friendship and task-related interactions,” the team reports. “Perceived intelligence and creativity play an important role in the advice network,” they say. They add that this supports a kernel of truth in the stereotype that attractiveness correlates with positive social traits and successful outcomes. Of course, the detailed findings also suggest that the relationships between all these factors is rather complicated and confounded in many instances.

Nevertheless, while on average, being liked seems to be as important as being considered intelligent and competent, the team found that the way people look plays a key role in determining the attribution of competence.

Fronzetti Colladon, A., Grippa, F., Battistoni, E., Gloor, P.A. and La Bella, A. (2018) ‘What makes you popular: beauty, personality or intelligence?‘, Int. J. Entrepreneurship and Small Business, Vol. 35, No. 2, pp.162-186.

International Journal of Integrated Supply Management to invite expanded papers from IFAC Conference MIM 2019 on Manufacturing Modelling, Management and Control for potential publication

Extended versions of papers presented at the 9th IFAC Conference MIM 2019 on Manufacturing Modelling, Management and Control (28-30 August 2019, Berlin, Germany) will be invited for review and potential publication by the International Journal of Integrated Supply Management.

Special issue published: "Modelling and Verification: Model Checking and Fault Tolerance: Part I"

International Journal of Critical Computer-Based Systems 8(2) 2018

• Model-based specification and validation of the dual-mode adaptive MAC protocol
• Fault diagnosis of discrete-event systems based on the symbolic observation graph
• A formal model for the analysis and verification of a pre-emptive round-robin arbiter
• Formal verification of intermittent fault diagnosability of discrete-event systems using model-checking
• Using temporal logics for specifying weak memory consistency models

Special issue published: "Innovative Computational Intelligence for Knowledge Representation and Learning"

International Journal of Computational Intelligence Studies 7(3/4) 2018

• Fast training of adaptive structural learning method of deep learning for multi modal data
• Time series classification using MACD-histogram-based recurrence plot
• A generative model approach for visualising convolutional neural networks
• Search performance analysis of qubit convergence measure for quantum-inspired evolutionary algorithm introducing on maximum cut problem
• Mining non-redundant recurrent rules from a sequence database
• Acquisition of characteristic sets of block preserving outerplanar graph patterns by a two-stage evolutionary learning method for graph pattern sets
• Characteristics of contrastive Hebbian learning with pseudorehearsal for multilayer neural networks on reduction of catastrophic forgetting

Research pick: How to dance to a synthetic band - "Development of a low-cost robotic pan flute"

Music plays an important role in most people’s lives regardless of the genre and in a wide variety of contexts from celebrations and parties to simply providing background while a task is being performed. Until very recently, music was only heard when musicians played it live, the ability to record music displaced that live performance to some degree, and then the invention of electronic musical instruments and digitisation changed our appreciation of music yet again.

Electronic music is incredibly popular and yet the subtle and not-so-subtle difference between musical sounds generated electronically and those played by a musician on a physical instrument are a barrier to appreciation for some listeners. Now, a team from Fiji and New Zealand, Praneel Chand of Unitec Institute of Technology, in Auckland and Kishen Kumar and Kishan Kumar of the University of the South Pacific, in Suva, are investigating the possibility of using robotics to allow non-expert musicians to play a musical instrument well. The idea would allow analogue music to be created on the instrument with the computer providing some of the requisite timing and tonal skills that might well be beyond the performer.

The team has demonstrated proof of principle with a robotic pan pipe. The low-cost prototype can produce the desired musical notes and has the ability to override variations in air flow that a non-expert player might produce during a performance. The team adds that the same software and approach might also be used to control robotic components for other Pacific island instruments such as the percussive Fijian lali.

Chand, P., Kumar, K. and Kumar, K. (2018) ‘Development of a low-cost robotic pan flute’, Int. J. Intelligent Machines and Robotics, Vol. 1, No. 2, pp.153-170.

Research pick: Small but knowledgeable - "The economic role of small knowledge intensive firms in European member states"

The Europe 2020 Strategy sees micro and small & medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) as the backbone of the European Union’s drive towards a smart, sustainable, inclusive, and growing economy. Diogo Ferraz and Elisabeth Pereira of the Department of Economics, Management, Industrial Engineering and Tourism (DEGEIT), at the University of Aveiro, Portugal, address the question as to the role of small knowledge intensive firms in the EU in this context.

Writing in the International Journal of Knowledge-Based Development, the team explain how they have investigated the relationship between a set of variables that characterises small knowledge-intensive firms and gross domestic product (GDP). They have also looked at the importance of business expenditure on research and development. The research involved analyzing econometrics across 24 EU member states for the period 2008 to 2012 using panel data and cluster analysis. The team found that those nations with high growth values in such companies also have the biggest growth in GDP R&D expenditure.

The team’s findings lend support to the strategic decisions of Europe 2020 Strategy, they explain, reinforcing the relevance of SMEs as a key driver for economic growth, innovation, employment, and social integration. The researchers add that, “The relevance assumed by the European Commission about SMEs and the strategy of a competitive European economy based on smart, sustainable and inclusive growth leads to the importance of small knowledge-intensive firm in the European context.”

Ferraz, D.E. and Pereira, E.T. (2018) ‘The economic role of small knowledge intensive firms in European member states‘, Int. J. Knowledge-Based Development, Vol. 9, No. 3, pp.221-243.

International Journal of Artificial Intelligence and Soft Computing to invite expanded papers from International Conference on Emerging Trends in Mathematical Sciences and Technology for potential publication

Extended versions of papers presented at the International Conference on Emerging Trends in Mathematical Sciences and Technology 2018 (20-21 December 2018, Jayaraj Annapackiam College for Women (Autonomous), Tamil Nadu, India) will be invited for review and potential publication by the International Journal of Artificial Intelligence and Soft Computing.

Free sample articles newly available from International Journal of Multimedia Intelligence and Security

The following sample articles from the International Journal of Multimedia Intelligence and Security are now available here for free:

• Vocabulary hierarchy optimisation based on spatial context and category information
• Efficient password-authenticated key agreement protocol for smart cards based on ECC
• A semi-fragile lossless digital watermarking based on adaptive threshold for image authentication
• Camera detection through internet of video sensors
• Performance analysis of secured video transmission over 3G networks based on H.264/AVC
• Line covering method and its applications in steganography and steganalysis

New Editor for International Journal of Modelling in Operations Management

Dr. Weihua Liu from Tianjin University in China has been appointed to take over editorship of the International Journal of Modelling in Operations Management.

Research pick: Keep your friends close - "Friendship acceptance on Facebook: men prefer cold calls from attractive women while women favour unattractive friends"

Online social networks, such as the well-known Facebook, allow users to form connections with each other quickly and easily. A user might invite another to become their “friend”, “like” a page they have created on the system, or join a group that forms a community within the overarching community. Of course, it is implicit that one should only “friend” people one knows. But, there are millions if not billions of connections where a user may not be even a passing acquaintance in the offline world and yet well connected to another person in the online.

Researchers in Switzerland, David Weibel and Bartholomäus Wissmath of the Department of Psychology, at the University of Bern, have investigated what inspires a person to accept a friendship request from another on Facebook. It seems that there is something of a stereotypical response: “men prefer cold calls from attractive women while women favour unattractive friends”, the team has found. The research builds on earlier work from Wang in 2010 that used fictitious user profiles to study what kinds of response to friendship requests might be seen in an online social network.

In the new work, the team sent out actual friendship requests to 800 Facebook users from male or female profile owners who were considered either attractive or unattractive. The study corroborated Wang’s 2010 finding and showed that approximately one in ten users responded to the cold calls, the unsolicited friendship requests from previously unknown users. They also demonstrated, as had Wang, the way in which men responded. However, they found that female users accepted invitations from unattractive profile owners rather than from attractive profile owners, regardless of the profile owners’ gender.

“Unlike our offline appearance, the shape of our online appearance is much more malleable and can be rapidly adapted in more subtle ways. Moreover, we believe that this study also raises in offline friendships,” the team adds.

Weibel, D. and Wissmath, B. (2018) ‘Friendship acceptance on Facebook: men prefer cold calls from attractive women while women favour unattractive friends‘, Int. J. Web Based Communities, Vol. 14, No. 3, pp.249-256.

Research pick: BYOD - "Bring your own device: a survey of threats and security management models"

Bring your own device (BYOD) is now common in the workplace. Rather than the employer providing specific gadgets, such as smartphones, tablet computers, and laptops workers are allowed and even encouraged to use their personal device in the work environment. From the employee perspective this can simplify the transition between working at home and in the office, for instance. However, it has also led to an always-available attitude that means one’s work-life balance is distorted by the fact that work colleagues and one’s boss can almost always connect to you even when you are not officially working. Moreover, they expect to be able to connect out of hours too.

There is a putative price to pay for employers who facilitate BYOD and all its benefits of lower costs for IT infrastructure and 24/7 access to their staff and that is the so-called cyber-security risk. By allowing any device into the building and on to the network, a workplace must accede that a device compromised by external malware or one setup maliciously by an unhappy employee, for instance, might wreak havoc on an unprotected system, interfere with day-to-day business and potentially disrupt an entire enterprise.

Fabricio Rivadeneira Zambrano of the Universidad Laica Eloy Alfaro de Manabi, in Chone, Ecuador and Glen Rodriguez Rafael of the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos, in Lima, Peru, have looked at the differences between security in the BYOD environment as opposed to the employer-provided device approach. It has previously been shown that productivity is much greater in the BYOD environment, but the use of illicit file-sharing, social media, and other apps is commonplace too.

Their study shows that there are many technical solutions and policies that are implemented in the BYOD workplace and these are commonly addressed by the corporate IT department to protect servers from malware and to block inappropriate use of personal devices on the corporate network. However, one aspect that is rarely addressed is the human factor, malice or ignorance, for instance. This must be looked at more closely the issues faced to allow BYOD to thrive and to bring all of its benefits to the workplace without the problems.

Zambrano, F.R.R. and Rafael, G.D.R. (2018) ‘Bring your own device: a survey of threats and security management models’, Int. J. Electronic Business, Vol. 14, No. 2, pp.146–170.

Special issue published: "Financial Education and Economic Inclusion in Emerging Markets"

International Journal of Education Economics and Development 9(4) 2018

• Financial literacy and business performances improvement of micro, small, medium-sized enterprises in East Java Province, Indonesia
• Financial literacy determinants among West Java athletes
• An empirical study on income equality, economic growth and financial inclusion in Indonesia: model development on SMEs financing
• Consumption and bank credit at the BRICS countries: a new light on the financial education process
• Building students' loyalty in private higher education institutions: activities for competitiveness
• Performance of shadow teachers in inclusive schools in Indonesia viewed from working understanding, appreciation of work and career guidance

Research pick: Music streaming to music subscriber - "Converting music streaming free users to paid subscribers: social influence or hedonic performance"

The music business has changed dramatically in the last couple of decades since the massive expansion of the internet, the development of music file compression algorithms, and the concept of anonymous file-sharing services. The business has perhaps been slow to respond to the technological change having attempted, often through the law, to try and stem the tide of illicit file sharing with scant regard for the fact that those who use such systems to obtain digital goods, such as music, are now entrenched and rather reluctant to go back to the old model of paying for those goods.

However, the emergence of on-demand streaming services has taken some of those users who felt some degree of guilt and given them an offering that, while not as lucrative as the original models of physical sales, offers an alternative revenue stream that is absent with what might be thought of as that conventional non-demand streaming service, the radio. Of course, users are keen to get as much from a streaming service as they can for free. The job of the services’ marketing departments is to convert those free streamers into subscribers.

US researchers have surveyed hundreds of music streaming users and found that social influence primarily affects a consumer’s attitude towards music streaming. This, in turn, drives their purchase intention, or otherwise. In contrast, the user’s simple hedonic performance expectancy seems to push those who already subscribe to maintain their subscription. Fundamentally, the music industry must begin to understand what is driving different types of user and to respond to their needs in a way that they never have before if they are to survive and thrive.

Chen, C.C., Leon, S. and Nakayama, M. (2018) ‘Converting music streaming free users to paid subscribers: social influence or hedonic performance‘, Int. J. Electronic Business, Vol. 14, No. 2, pp.128-145.

Special issue published: "Learning Technology for Life-Long Learning"

International Journal of Continuing Engineering Education and Life-Long Learning 28(2) 2018

• Synchronous virtual tools to develop and evaluate cooperative learning in an online learning community
• An innovative fuzzy-based multicriteria decision making method for evaluating the performance of electronic exam systems
• Vocational students' professional ability: quantitative reconstruction and evaluation
• Webometrics ranking: a less commercialised (and more objective) measure of ranking for institutions of higher learning
• Research and development of website application of material mechanics based on flipped course
• A review on student-centred higher education in civil engineering: evaluation of student perceptions
• Using digital storytelling to extend the flipped classroom approach

New Editor for International Journal of Business and Emerging Markets

Associate Prof. Yam B. Limbu from Montclair State University in the USA has been appointed to take over editorship of the International Journal of Business and Emerging Markets.

Research pick: Better chocolate with mobile technology - "Mobile technology for smart agriculture: deployment case for cocoa production"

Smart farming uses technology to access real-time information on crop yields and soil-mapping, fertiliser application, weather data, and intelligent assessment and so improve agricultural efficiency and crop yields. However, for some economies, there remains a huge gap between farmer and app, as it were. For those valuable commodity products such as cocoa and coffee beans, the mobile technology revolution is yet to reach the farm in anything but the most superficial way.

Researchers in Canada, writing in the International Journal of Sustainable Agricultural Management and Informatics, highlight how that gap might be narrowed specifically for cocoa bean growers in Ghana. Ultimately, their research could help farmers find ways to use smartphones to access agronomic information on cocoa management, carry out self-assessment exercises on cocoa pod infestation, as well as perform stock analyses of their produce. They also suggest that technology could open up a crowd-sourcing forum for farmers to discuss issues and problems.

The team has already shown the farmers would be receptive to such technology having obtained positive feedback in most cases from 32 cocoa producers with regard to the concept of a forum and all of them were keen to use an app that could help them improve cocoa production. The team hopes that the success of their research will push stakeholders and policymakers to improve smart agriculture in Ghana where the government is yet to invest in technology in the way that has happened in advanced nations.

Lomotey, R.K., Mammay, A. and Orji, R. (2018) ‘Mobile technology for smart agriculture: deployment case for cocoa production‘, Int. J. Sustainable Agricultural Management and Informatics, Vol. 4, No. 2, pp.83-97

Inderscience journals to invite expanded papers from International Conference of Critical Accounting 2019 for potential publication

Extended versions of papers presented at the International Conference of Critical Accounting (25-26 April 2019, New York) will be invited for review and potential publication by the following journals:

• African J. of Accounting, Auditing and Finance
• African J. of Economic and Sustainable Development
• Int. J. of Critical Accounting
• Int. J. of Economics and Accounting

International Journal of Data Mining, Modelling and Management to invite expanded papers from International Conference on Business, Big-Data, and Decision Sciences 2019 for potential publication

Extended versions of papers presented at the International Conference on Business, Big-Data, and Decision Sciences 2019 (22-24 August 2019, Tokyo, Japan) will be invited for review and potential publication by the International Journal of Data Mining, Modelling and Management.

New Editor for International Journal of Services Operations and Informatics

Dr. Daniel Palacios from Universitat Politècnica de València in Spain has been appointed to take over editorship of the International Journal of Services Operations and Informatics.

Research pick: Researching research - "A new social network analysis-based approach to extracting knowledge patterns about research activities and hubs in a set of countries"

Researchers in Italy have devised a new social network analysis-based approach to studying research scenarios. The multidimensional picture they can obtain of research in a set of countries using this technique can reveal interest and might even be able to detect hubs operating within those countries. Paolo Lo Giudice and Domenico Ursino of the University ‘Mediterranea’ of Reggio Calabria, Paolo Russo of Negg International, in Rome, explain that such improved understanding might lead to new insights into how socio-economic factors influence research.

The team has investigated the North African countries of Algeria, Egypt, Morocco, and Tunisia in the anticipation of providing new knowledge to policymakers who might then be able to sustain the accumulation of scientific and technological capabilities in the region in a way that has not been possible previously.

The data available for scientometrics and bibliometrics investigations of scientific and technological research continues to grow apace. There is therefore an urgent need, if use is to be made of this “big data”, to develop the necessary tools examine and interpret this data and to plot out meaning and extract knowledge from it. The team’s success with their social network analysis (SNA) approach now points them towards developing the approach still further to extract knowledge patterns about patent inventors and how they cooperate, to verify the presence of ‘power inventors’ in a given country, and to verify the existence of a backbone and of possible cliques among them.

Giudice, P.L., Russo, P. and Ursino, D. (2018) ‘A new social network analysis-based approach to extracting knowledge patterns about research activities and hubs in a set of countries‘, Int. J. Business Innovation and Research, Vol. 17, No. 2, pp.147-186.

Special issue published: "Russian Regions in the Focus of Changes"

International Journal of Economic Policy in Emerging Economies 11(6) 2018

• The impact of spatial concentration on enterprise performance: is localisation level optimal in Russia?
• Explaining the performance of Russian export: what role does the soft and hard infrastructure play?
• Strengthening competitive forces in Russian mandatory health insurance
• Current status of higher education in the regions of Russia: a pilot study
• Empirical analysis of civil servants wage and maintenance setting: evidence from Perm region

Special issue published: "Intelligent Machine Learning Algorithms for High Performance Computing"

International Journal of Internet Technology and Secured Transactions 8(4) 2018

• Design and analysis of smart card-based authentication scheme for secure transactions
• Secure geospatial data storage using SpatialHadoop framework in cloud environment
• Secured data storage and auditing of data integrity over dynamic data in cloud
• Propels in compiler construction for versatile figuring
• Automatic segmentation of pathological region (tumour and oedema) in high grade glioma multi-sequence MR images through voted prediction from pixel level feature sets
• Improving performance an artificial bee colony optimisation on CloudSim
• Enhanced efficient SYN spoofing detection and mitigation scheme for DDoS attacks
• An efficient probabilistic authentication scheme for converging VANET
• Anti-continuous collisions user-based unpredictable iterative password salted hash encryption
• Intrusion detection model using feature extraction and LPBoost technique
• Threat analysis for an in-vehicle telematics control unit

New Editor for International Journal of Intellectual Property Management

Prof. Domingo Enrique Ribeiro-Soriano from Universitat de València in Spain has been appointed to take over editorship of the International Journal of Intellectual Property Management.

Research pick: Water, water not quite everywhere - "Water, migration and environment in a Mediterranean perspective"

Are environmental changes in the Mediterranean region influencing human mobility in the West Asia and North Africa (WANA) region? That is the question that Bruno Venditto of the Institute of Studies on Mediterranean Societies, at the Italian National Council of Research, in Naples, Italy, sets out to answer in the International Journal of Migration and Residential Mobility.

He points out that for this region, mobility has been an important aspect of humanity for millennia. However, in today’s environment of climate change marginalizing those who live on the fringes of the habitable zones of the world, there are growing issues of broader security and geopolitical challenges to face too, including water scarcity. While other observers have warned of mass migrations that might arise because of climate change and the problems it brings in this region, their predictions often ignore the rich heritage of human mobility in this region as well as not necessarily taking into account the adaptability of the people of this and neighbouring regions.

“Human mobility is a prominent feature of the geographic area of the WANA countries, ‘pull’ factors (such as the presence of rich countries, the commonality of language and culture, etc.) and ‘push’ factors (represented by persistent poverty, political and social instability leading to conflicts, environmental calamities, just to mention a few) have made the movements between and within the states, a phenomenon typical of the region,” explains Venditto. He adds that migrants moving from Sub-Saharan Africa towards the Western European countries often stop in the nearer countries along the journey, creating what is now known as transit migration. This does lead to potential instability and conflicts in and among the countries affected.

Venditto concludes that ultimately, we must consider both environmental and climate effects with a broader perspective on how they might influence migration. This will require a multidisciplinary approach that can grasp the complexities and variables that drive or slow migration.

Venditto, B. (2018) ‘Water, migration and environment in a Mediterranean perspective‘, Int. J. Migration and Residential Mobility, Vol. 1, No. 4, pp.283-299.

Research pick: Natural nanotech anticancer drug - "Preparation of liposomes containing benzophenanthridine alkaloid sanguinarine and evaluation of its cytotoxic activity"

Sanguinarine is a natural product, a chemical made by certain plants including the bloodroot plant (Sanguinaria canadensis), the Mexican prickly poppy (Argemone mexicana), Chelidonium majus, and Macleaya cordata. It is a slightly toxic polycyclic ammonium ion, an alkaloid, and has been demonstrated to have antitumour and antiviral properties. It also blocks the formation of blood vessels, it is antiangiogenic, and so has even greater potential as an anticancer agent.



Now, a team from Russia has investigated the potential of this compound to be delivered to diseased target sites in the body using nanoscopic carriers known as liposomes. The team suggests that the liposomes can more efficiently deliver the putative drug compound to cancer cells than it simply being delivered by conventional chemotherapy methods (as a drug solution given either by mouth or intravenously).

Their tests revealed that the liposome preparations gave a prolonged release of the drug rather than it being processed quickly by the liver and excreted by the kidneys as happens with conventional drugs. Indeed, the drug-bearing liposomes showed a dose-dependent response in terms of cytotoxicity in the laboratory against B16 cells (experimental mouse melanoma cells).

“Liposomal sanguinarine may have advantages for in vivo anticancer therapy, due to its lower toxicity and ‘passive targeting’ as a result of enhanced permeability of tumour vessels,” the team reports in the International Journal of Nanotechnology.

Feldman, N.B., Kuryakov, V.N., Sedyakina, N.E., Gromovykh, T.I. and Lutsenko, S.V. (2018) ‘Preparation of liposomes containing benzophenanthridine alkaloid sanguinarine and evaluation of its cytotoxic activity’, Int. J. Nanotechnol., Vol. 15, Nos. 4/5, pp.280-287.

Special issue published: "Contemporary Management Issues and Decision Making Models in Systems Engineering"

International Journal of Management and Decision Making 17(4) 2018

• A novel scheduling framework: integrating genetic algorithms and discrete event simulation
• Food safety risk analysis from the producers' perspective: prioritisation of production process stages by HACCP and TOPSIS
• A multi-criteria decision making approach for prioritising product-service systems implementation in smart cities
• A decision-making application for project management through timed coloured Petri nets
• Product quality and energy consumption optimisation of dyeing fixing process by steaming through DOE analysis: a cotton case study
• Optimisation of supply chain networks under uncertainty: conditional value at risk approach

Special issue published: "Mechanical Engineering Science"

Progress in Industrial Ecology, An International Journal 12(1/2) 2018

• Parametric optimisation of friction welded 17-4 PH SS alloy using Taguchi techniques
• A machine learning approach for condition monitoring of wind turbine blade using autoregressive moving average (ARMA) features through vibration signals: a comparative study
• Predicting dispersion of radionuclides through parallel approach
• HAIWF-based fault detection and classification for industrial machine condition monitoring
• Review on effects of performance, emission and combustion characteristics of emulsified fuel in bifuel engine
• Role of non-consumable tool design on tensile properties of friction stir welded aluminium alloy joints
• Free vibration analysis of carbon nanotube reinforced composite Timoshenko beam
• Misfire detection in I.C. engine through ARMA features using machine learning approach
• Prediction of springback effect by the hybridisation of ANN with PSO in wipe bending process of sheet metal
• Computational analysis of three blade vertical axis wind turbine
• Taguchi analysis of tool wear and delamination in milling of GFRP composite using coated K10 end mill
• Experimenting with runtime and energy tradeoffs in high-performance computing
• Thermodynamic analysis of Kalina cycle configurations for utilisation of geothermal energy
• Characterisation of mechanical and tribological behaviour of hybrid fibre reinforced polymer composites
• Air compressor fault diagnosis through statistical feature extraction and random forest classifier
• Abrasion wear of cutting tool developed from recycled steel using palm kernel shell as carbon additive

Research pick: Guiding research into social innovation - "Social innovation: what do we know and do not know about it"

Anderson Sasaki Vasques Pacheco and Karin Vieira da Silva of the Centro Universitário de Brusque in Santa Catarina, Brazil, Maria João Santos of ISEG (the Lisbon School of Economics and Management), Portugal, have endeavoured to create a scientific framework for the most relevant research outputs on social innovation.* They looked at more than one thousand papers to outline the historical evolution of social innovation studies, the scientific fields that have done the most research on this theme as well as those works with the greatest influence over subsequent research. The result is a map of this field and how it has changed over the years.

The team points out that while there has been an increased interest in studying social innovation in recent years, the resulting heterogeneous research output is difficult to assess. Moreover, this diversity of research type and output has perhaps hindered the development of a coherent paradigm for the understanding of social innovation.

“Currently, any researcher wishing to embark on studying this theme would have to wade through a tide of articles with multiple definitions and various means of analysis of distinct and different aspects of social innovation,” the team laments.

With this in mind, their efforts could provide an integrated vision of the scientific field and so allow research to move forward much more effectively. They explain that the main contribution of their present work derives from the guidance it might provide to those hoping to carry out research in this field by identifying which articles and theoretical conceptualisations are the most relevant in their associated fields of knowledge.

Pacheco, A.S.V., Santos, M.J. and da Silva, K.V. (2018) ‘Social innovation: what do we know and do not know about it‘, Int. J. Innovation and Learning, Vol. 24, No. 3, pp.301-326.

*Social innovation is defined in Wikipedia as “new strategies, concepts, ideas, and organizations that aim to meet social needs resulting from working conditions, education, community development, and health.”
Its objectives are to extend and strengthen society using open source methods and techniques, innovations with a social purpose, such as activism, online volunteering, microcredit, distance learning, and more.