Free sample articles newly available from International Journal of Electric and Hybrid Vehicles

The following sample articles from the International Journal of Electric and Hybrid Vehicles are now available here for free:

• Electric vehicle attitudes and purchase intention: a Flemish case study
• Economical approach for sizing a battery in plug-in hybrid electric vehicles considering statistical user behaviour and power demand for climatisation
• Investigation of the energy management and powertrain systems effects on hybrid vehicle performance
• Fuzzy controlled evaporative battery thermal management system for EV/HEV
• An electro-mobility system for freight service in urban areas

No ticket to ride

Urban ridesharing services could be much more effective, efficient and have greater uptake if they were more dynamic and took into account all the major factors associated with running such as a service, according to research published in Progress in Industrial Ecology – An International Journal.

Giovanni Zenezini of the Department of Management and Production Engineering at the Politecnico di Torino, and colleagues there and in the research labs of Telecom Italia explain that there are four major considerations involved in ride sharing services. The first is that a third-party provides a matching platform managing the interactions between the two users, driver and passenger. Secondly, the ride-sharing platforms make one-time ride matches that are generally not repeated and take place at random points and at random times. Thirdly, a ridesharing system must be flexible in order to match users at very short notice. Finally, the purpose of the trip being taken is irrelevant to the match.
The team points out that services such as Uber and Lyft match users at short notice and make one-time ride matches, but in reality, they directly match drivers with passengers, without taking into consideration the trip accommodation of either party. In this sense, they satisfy the first three consideration but do not take into account the fourth and so cannot be considered to be dynamic ridesharing system by definition.

Ride-sharing has the potential to reduce urban pollution and emissions and vehicular congestion, nudging cities and towns towards a more sustainable transport solution. These systems exploit the near ubiquity of smart phones and location services, such as GPS in many cities around the world to help drivers and passengers arrange shared rides and broker information exchange and remuneration as appropriate. Ride-sharing schemes face a “bootstrap” problem in that they need a good supply of drivers to encourage passengers to use the service but in order to recruit people to be drivers there needs to be sufficient demand, which means encouraging passengers to use such a service.

“Ridesharing services need to reach a critical number of users, especially in the initial phase, in order to provide a desirable level of matching between drivers and passengers,” the researchers explain. Only then can they pull themselves up by their bootstraps. The team’s case study reveals that essentially an initial boost from advertising is critical to whether or not a new ridesharing service can become viable. Subsequently, penetration rate depends on rapid growth of the driver and passenger communities. Pushing the benefits to future drivers is also paramount as is providing a backup service for passengers as and when the primary service fails to find a suitable journey match.

Zenezini points out that, “Consolidating demand can be achieved when selected group of individuals have the same destination, as in the case of employees of one company or maybe for a special event (e.g. a concert). This means that this selected group of users also share the purpose of the journey, such as commuting or leisure.”


De Marco, A., Giannantonio, R. and Zenezini, G. (2015) ‘The diffusion mechanisms of dynamic ridesharing services’, Progress in Industrial Ecology – An International Journal, Vol. 9, No. 4, pp.408–432.
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Call for papers: "Unveiling the Commercialisation Mechanisms and Dynamics of University Technological Inventions"

For a special issue of the International Journal of Technology Management.

In the last few decades, the yearly number of new technological inventions that have emerged from the labs of companies and research institutions has drastically grown (e.g., Lissoni et al., 2008; OECD, 2012). However, new technology development by itself does not contribute to societal growth, unless technologies are then commercialised. Indeed, technologies that do not enter the market limit the organisations’ opportunities to generate new value, gain profits from their R&D efforts, and foster economic and social wealth creation (Ardito et al., 2015; Schuh and Drescher, 2014; Shane, 2002; Carayannis and Rakhmatullin, 2014). Technology commercialisation is, therefore, pivotal in today’s global economy.

In particular, the commercialisation of university technological inventions has become of foremost importance in the last few years (Grimpe and Hussinger, 2013; Shane, 2002). Notably, the results of university research are more and more deemed to create relevant market opportunities and play a key role within the national innovation processes. In this context, the commercialisation of university technological inventions has been identified as a major mechanism by which they can sustain market formation and improve global innovative performance (Henderson et al., 1998), hence shifting their traditional primary role from education providers and scientific knowledge creators towards a more complex “entrepreneurial” organisation (Etzkowitz et al., 2000; Philpott et al., 2011; Del Giudice et al., 2013). Accordingly, nowadays, universities tend to actively secure rents arising from their proprietary inventions and contribute to firms’ innovative activities by defining ad-hoc strategies to manage the deployment and commercialisation of their technical discoveries (Thursby et al., 2001).

According to the foregoing discussion, a first stream of the literature delves into the dynamics underlying the processes through which universities license or sell their inventions (i.e. the external technology commercialisation approach) (Grimpe and Hussinger, 2013; Shane, 2002; Nicotra et al., 2014). This line of inquiry discusses this strategy in order to understand how to reduce search and transaction costs by favouring the commercialisation of universities’ inventions, protect their intellectual property, implement the functions of technology commercialisation into universities’ strategies and routines, and unveil the contingencies of this specific strategy. In fact, more effort is needed to further comprehend how to overcome the impediments towards the adoption of an effective licensing/selling strategy for universities, such as misalignment of incentives, inappropriate staffing, researchers aversions to selling their inventions, and the differences characterising the environments, norms, and values of academic institutions and companies (e.g., Franco and Haase, 2015; Perkmann et al., 2013).

Differently, a second research stream aims at analysing the formation of university spin-offs and new ventures. Indeed, universities often tend to commercialise their technological inventions through ad hoc companies formed by researchers (Rasmussen et al., 2014; Swamidass, 2012). Nevertheless, a number of universities face relevant difficulties in creating successful spin-offs and gaining advantage from this technology commercialisation approach. Thereby, examining how the transition from the research university to the entrepreneurial one occurs it is relevant to understand how academic research enters the market and allows achieving returns from related inventive efforts (Van Burg et al., 2008; Carayannis et al., 2015). This corresponds to a more thorough comprehension of the interplay between the university, department, and inventor-level responsibilities in new ventures creation, the role of the technology transfer offices, the potential benefits of university science parks, the policy systems sustaining university spin-offs, and the factors required to sustain the growth of these new ventures (e.g., Philpott et al., 2011; Rasmussen et al., 2014).

However, despite the relevant role of the commercialisation of university technological inventions is nowadays well known and largely discussed in literature, relevant gaps still exist. Therefore, this special issue seeks to bring together high-quality research that furthers the understanding of the mechanisms and dynamics sustaining university technology commercialisation. Specifically, it encourages papers that examine novel phenomena, employing original methodologies, and offering interesting empirical insights and theoretical contribution to this research stream.

Suitable topics include, but are not limited to, the following:

• University-industry relationships for technology commercialisation
• The role of intellectual property mechanisms in fostering university technology commercialisation
• If and how universities manage external technology commercialisation and spin-off creations simultaneously
• The characteristics of academic entrepreneurs
• Entrepreneurship and university technology transfer
• Linking the antecedents and outcomes of university technology commercialisation
• The role of universities' technology transfer offices in promoting technology commercialisation
• Policy support to university technology commercialisation
• The antecedents of university spin-off creations
• The role of incubators and venture capitalists to sustain and enhance university spin-offs' emergence and growth.
• The role of university science parks to favour university-industry interactions
• Assessing the factors favouring effective financial and innovative performance of university spin-offs
• Legal aspects of university technology commercialisation

Important Dates

Manuscripts due by: 15 Ju1y, 2017

Inderscience journals to publish expanded papers from 15th IEEE International Conference on Trust, Security and Privacy in Computing and Communications

Extended versions of papers presented at the 15th IEEE International Conference on Trust, Security and Privacy in Computing and Communications (23-26 August 2016, Tianjin, China) will be published by the following journals:

• Int. J. of Computational Science and Engineering
• Int. J. of Embedded Systems
• Int. J. of High Performance Computing and Networking

Call for papers: "Intelligence in Communication Systems"

For a special issue of the International Journal of Advanced Intelligence Paradigms.

With the increasing number of processing systems being used in wireless system design, newer and improved nature-inspired computational methods are being developed. The objective of this special issue is to present advances and recent developments in various computational intelligence techniques with emphasis on design of wireless communication systems.

The special issue will focus on the latest advances in theory and methodologies of computational intelligence techniques such as neural networks, fuzzy systems, evolutionary algorithms, hybrid intelligent systems, uncertain reasoning techniques and other machine learning methods and their applications for optimisation, decision making and problem solving in mobile and wireless communication networks.

The issue will carry revised and substantially extended versions of selected papers presented at the International Conference on Advances in Computational Intelligence in Communication (CIC16), but we also strongly encourage researchers unable to participate in the conference to submit articles for this call.

Suitable topics include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Applications of computational intelligence in design of wireless networks
• Bio-inspired algorithms
• Optimisation techniques
• Cognitive wireless sensor networks
• Computational intelligence and energy-efficient protocols
• Distributed and parallel algorithms
• Learning patterns from sensor sources
• Communication system modelling
• Computational methods for image filtering, enhancement and segmentation
• Computational methods for signal recovery
• Computational methods for speech processing
• Learning algorithms for adaptive signal processing
• Computational intelligence in image analysis
• Computational methods for telemedicine
• Design of intelligent systems

Important Dates

Submission of manuscripts: 28 February, 2017

Special issue published: "Next Generation of Research in Transportation and Logistics: Our Common Future"

World Review of Intermodal Transportation Research 5(4) 2015

• Automation in operations management through positive train control: are the deadlines reasonable?
• Electric vehicle household charging behaviour in Ireland and aims for a carbon neutral electric fleet by 2020
• Red Sea and Mediterranean Sea land bridge via Eilat
• The modal shift potential of intermodal line-trains from a haulier's perspective: drivers and barriers in the mode choice process
• A regional regime - as a step towards an international regime in multimodal transport? 

Inderscience is media partner for Orphan Drugs 2016

Inderscience is a media partner for Orphan Drugs (19-20 October 2016, London, UK).

The journals involved are:

• Int. J. of Behavioural and Healthcare Research
• Int. J. of Cognitive Biometrics
• Int. J. of Computational Biology and Drug Design
• Int. J. of Immunological Studies
• Int. J. of Medical Engineering and Informatics

Call for papers: "Internet of Things-based Cloud Computing"

For a special issue of the International Journal of Internet of Things and Cyber-Assurance.

Recent technological advances have completely changed the computing world. These advances are more human-centric and provide real-life solutions to issues. Internet of Things-based Cloud computing provides smart and faster real-life solutions in many areas such as eTransportation, eHealth, eAgriculture, etc. Applications being designed for the Internet of Things involve many challenges related to the designing of frameworks, algorithms, protocols and architecture.

The goal of this special issue is to present the latest and most innovative contributions concerning real-life use of the Internet of Things. It aims to publish high-quality papers that push research in all the facets of Internet of Things-based cloud computing. Contributors may present open technical evaluation and comparisons with existing standards. Theoretical as well as experimental studies related to real-life scenarios are encouraged.

The issue will carry revised and substantially extended versions of selected papers presented at the International Conference on Advances in Computing and Data Sciences (ICACDS-2016), but we also strongly encourage researchers unable to participate in the conference to submit articles for this call.

Suitable topics include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Internet of Things-based architectures
• Internet of Things-based eHealth applications
• Internet of Things in intelligent transportation
• Internet of Things-based big data analysis
• Knowledge-based discovery of devices in the Internet of Things
• Context-aware computing for Internet of Things
• Pervasive and ubiquitous computing for Internet of Things
• Modelling and communicating transparency in Internet of Things
• Cloud-based information security, trust and assurance
• Cloud-based Internet of Things architectures
• Smart things and RFID communications
• Cloud-based Internet of Things applications
• Practical experiences in smart cities, large-scale IoT Systems
• Cloud-based Internet of Things frameworks
• Internet of Things and mobile context awareness

Important Dates
Submission of manuscripts: 31 March, 2017

Inderscience is media partner for Mobile Payments Latin America 2016

Inderscience is a media partner for Mobile Payments Latin America 2016 (20-21 September 2016, Miami, USA).

The journals involved are:

• Int. J. of Financial Innovation in Banking
• Int. J. of Mobile Communications

Special issue published: "Open, Flexible and Personalised Learning"

International Journal of Innovation and Learning 19(4) 2016

Extended versions of papers presented at the 7th International Conference on Hybrid Learning.

• Technical considerations in the development of an online platform for open textbooks
• Leveraging education of information technology in business: the application of a project-based, problem-based, and flexible learning model
• A multi-party Mahjong-like spelling game for English vocabulary learning
• Personalised-adaptive learning - an operational framework for developing competency-based curricula in computer information technology
• Learning via mobile phones - students' learning styles, needs, preferences and concerns
• Surveying university teaching and students' learning styles

Call for papers: "Global Energy and Sustainable Development"

For a special issue of the International Journal of Global Energy Issues.

Energy is a very important topic of research driving the modern world. Energy production and consumption are associated with a number of environmental effects that require effective and affordable management and maximum energy efficiency. Oil and other fossil fuel depletion, reliance on foreign energy sources, energy needs of poorer countries, debate on economic efficiency versus population growth, environmental issues such as climate change and renewable and other alternative energy sources are some of the issues of concern.

This special issue is dedicated to these issues. Contributions will be selected through a refereeing process consistent with the standard reviewing process of the journal, to ensure that only original contributions of the highest quality are included. Applied theoretical and analytical contributions are expected to provide guidance to policy makers and government officials in designing new policy scenarios for the investigation of energy consumption and the economic growth nexus. Empirical contributions should provide evidence to support and inform current policy debates.

This issue will be of benefit to policy makers and researchers worldwide, whether aiding rich developed economies where historical distortions survive in the energy sector, emerging economies with heavily regulated prices where there is a need to design policy options for the transition towards a welfare-improving economic structure, or finally more liberalised economies such as the US and the European Union countries.

Suitable topics include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Energy policy and planning
• Energy finance and economics
• Risk management and the future of energy
• Non-renewable and renewable energy resources
• Energy efficiency and productivity analysis
• Assessments of energy systems and energy projects' results
• Energy conservation, buildings
• Sustainable transportation/mobility
• Energy accounting
• Energy options in climate policy
• Competition in the energy sector
• Energy consumption and economic growth

Important Dates

Submission of manuscripts: 31 October, 2016

Notification to authors: 31 December, 2016

Final versions due: 28 February, 2017

Too old to die young

The level of education in a given country correlates well with life expectancy at birth, according to a new study published in the International Journal of Innovation and Learning. The researchers suggest that educating the young as well as encouraging lifelong learning could both improve the figures still further.

Anica Novak of the NGO Association for Education and Sustainable Development, in Portorož, Slovenia, and colleagues explain that life expectancy at birth has increased by 21 years from 46.6 years in 1950–1955 to 67.6 years in 2005–2010. However, for that latter period the improvement in less developed countries was not on average as good as in developed nations. Average life expectancy in the former is still 11 years lower than life expectancy at birth in developed countries.
Many researchers have investigated factors that affect life expectancy at birth. Of course, the standard of public health, environmental concerns, food availability, water supply, availability of modern medicine, lifestyle, exposure to lethal diseases and many other factors determine the chances that a newborn will survive into old age.

Education too has been shown by various studies to affect life expectancy. “A higher education level among young women positively affects their reproductive health and their status in a family, community and society,” Novak reports. One possible factor, she adds, is that, “More educated women are less likely to get infected with HIV which further increases life expectancy at birth.” Others have shown that increasing the length of formal education among young people positively affects their professional career and improves their living standard and consequently life expectancy at birth. The team also adds that others have shown that teenage pregnancy and motherhood is associated with lower education of young women, lower income and living standard and consequently lower life expectancy at birth.

The team has now tested statistically the importance of education level on data from 187 countries taking into account whether gender inequality negatively impacts life expectancy at birth, whether expected years of schooling have a positive impact and whether years of schooling is actually one of the strongest determinants. “Our research confirms a strong importance of a country’s education level and imply that societies should encourage education among young people as well as education of adults through lifelong learning programmes,” the team concludes.


Novak, A., Cepar, Ž. And Trunk, A. (2016) ‘The Role Of Expected Years Of Schooling Among Life Expectancy Determinants’, Int. J. Innovation And Learning, Vol. 20, No. 1, Pp.85–99.
via Inderscience – Science Spot http://ift.tt/1U5s8gK

Learning in fewer than 140 characters on Twitter

Twitter can be an engaging communication tool for building a learning community according to research just published in the International Journal of Social Media and Interactive Learning Environments. Scott Warren of the College of Information, at the University of North Texas, in Denton, USA, explains how the merits of the microblogging platform have been little discussed as an educational tool despite its widespread use and familiarity as a social networking platform.

“Research on the use of specific tools and reports of curriculum or instruction designed to leverage them remains weak,” Warren explains. He describes how an instructor has developed a course using Twitter as an important means of academic communication and support for a nascent learning community. “The study found that designing a course to include Twitter for out-of-class discourse fostered desired communicative actions for learning while also allowing the instructor to help foster student-initiated community,” Warren adds.

Warren points out that there is a lot of work in the research literature that describes the pros and cons of online social networking and social media tools in the business and marketing context, but there has been only limited research into the role such tools might play in education. However, given the near ubiquity of mobile devices such as smart phones and tablet computers, there is an urgency in finding out how these tools might benefit learners and improve the educational process. Twitter, Warren suggests, has not been adopted widely so far by educators although academics in Europe, North America and elsewhere have reported some successes. It is commonly used to augment conventional blogs, online forums and learning management systems and has been used as a peer-to-peer support tool by educators and learners.

Warren points out that the hashtag system, familiar to regular Twitter users can be used as a tool for organizing information while Twitter lists can be utilized to build communities. Twitter’s searchable archive has obvious merits for retrieving old posts while its direct messaging (DM) system allows private communication. He adds that the 140-character limit on a Twitter update afforded users, enforces brevity in communication which can accelerate discussion by limiting expansive comments somewhat in normal use. Twitter as an educational communication tool is not perfect, but then no tool is.

“Communication is at the heart of teaching and learning and…today’s social media tools can be employed validly and robustly to support educational experiences for today’s students,” Warren concludes.


Warren, S.J. (2016) ‘The Twitter academic: supporting learning communications in 140 characters or less’, Int. J. Social Media and Interactive Learning Environments, Vol. 4, No. 1, pp.1–22.
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Pencil test for pipeline cracks

It is impossible to see when the “lead” in a pencil cracks within the pencil, but an acoustic sensor can “hear” the change in the way the pencil vibrates. Now, researchers in China have reported in the International Journal of Sensor Networks how the same principle can be used to detect cracks in oil pipelines components in remote regions where extreme conditions can lead to corrosion, damage to welds and pipe alike.

Xin-hua Wang and Jie Yang of Wuhan University of Technology, Yu-lin Jiao of Shangqiu Vocational and Technical College, and Yong-chao Niu of Shangqiu Jinpeng Industrial Co., Ltd., explain how cracks in a pencil “lead” or pipeline change the way in which stress waves are carried and this can be detected by an acoustic sensor. The team’s tests involved an acoustic sensor and the Nielsen-Hsu pencil break simulation of acoustic emission source in a specific location. The time it takes for an acoustic wave to bounce back to the sensor depends on whether or not a crack is present in the pencil “lead” in the simulation, or the pipework in the real world.

A network of such sensors on a pipeline could allow maintenance crews to quickly pinpoint pipeline damage and schedule a repair. Initial studies show that the acoustic sensors can home in on a crack with an error rate of less than 5%, which could significantly reduce search times for damage over the vast distances traversed by pipelines.


Wang, X-h., Jiao, Y-l., Yang, J. and Niu, Y-c. (2016) ‘The acoustic emission detection and localisation technology of the pipeline crack’, Int. J. Sensor Networks, Vol. 20, No. 2, pp.111–118.
via Inderscience – Science Spot http://ift.tt/1U5rsIu

Inderscience is media partner for 6th Social Media within the Defence and Military Sector conference

Inderscience is a media partner for 6th Social Media within the Defence and Military Sector (14-15 November 2016, London, UK).

The journals involved are:

• Int. J. of Intelligent Defence Support Systems
• Int. J. of Internet Marketing and Advertising
• Int. J. of Technology Management
• Int. J. of Web Based Communities

Special issue published: "Sites of Religion, Sites of Heritage: Exploring the Interface between Religion and Heritage in Tourist Destinations"

International Journal of Tourism Anthropology 5(1/2) 2016

• Re-inventing Europe: the case of the Camino de Santiago de Compostela as European heritage and the political and economic discourses of cultural unity
• Producing heritage: culture as commodity in Madurai
• Shrine visiting as heritage
• The impact of the consecration of 'La Sagrada Familia' basilica in Barcelona by Pope Benedict XVI
• Performing the sacred: Varanasi, the city of living heritage

Additional papers

• New ways of gazing: the refractive gaze
• The artisan backpacker: a development in Latin American backpacker tourism

Call for papers: "Environment and Sustainable Development"

For a special issue of the International Journal of Global Environmental Issues.

Recently, there is significant research interest in tackling the various environmental problems with the associated findings of empirical applications and their policy implications. The aim of this special issue is to consider the economic growth and the environment dispute in terms of the most up-to-date and advanced methods applied in various modelling techniques together with the use of better and larger data sets.

Today, policy and institutional data including transparency variables are available. At the same time, more measurements on sustainability further increase the importance of this dispute. More particularly, the Paris agreement on climate change shows the importance of understanding climate change policy’s impact on the economy. IPCC AR5 Working Group 2 shows uncertainty in damage estimates. Better estimates are essential to future policy discussions.

The 1.5 degree target for climate change was a rather unexpected outcome as a global policy option for the climate change agreement. As many previous studies focus on a 2 degree target, few are known. This special issue will try to address this important policy request along with factors such as expected outcomes for the economy, land use and food availability, among others.

The issue is dedicated to these issues in sustainability. Contributions will be selected through a refereeing process consistent with the standard reviewing process of the journal, to ensure that only original contributions of the highest quality are included. Applied theoretical and analytical contributions are expected to provide guidance to policy makers and government officials in designing new policy scenarios for the investigation of energy consumption and the economic growth nexus. Empirical contributions should provide evidence to support and inform current policy debates.

This special issue will be of benefit to policy makers and researchers worldwide, as sustainability is a main concern in the research agenda. Its goal is to inform readers of authors’ main findings, thus indicating more suitable ways of achieving economic growth with the appropriate respect to the environment and to future generations.

Suitable topics include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Economic growth and the environment: environmental problems
• Acid rain, deforestation, ozone depletion, polluted seas
• Global warming and climate change
• Biodiversity and valuation
• Population, poverty and economic growth
• Decoupling of environmental and resource pressures
• Sustainable transportation
• Sustainable tourism
• Environmental efficiency and productivity analysis
• Environmental quality: air and water quality, noise pollution
• Sustainable development
• Waste management
• Unexpected events

Important Dates

Submission of manuscripts: 31 October, 2016

Notification to authors: 31 December, 2016

Final versions due: 28 February, 2017

First issue: International Journal of Spatial, Temporal and Multimedia Information Systems (free sample issue available)

The International Journal of Spatial, Temporal and Multimedia Information Systems is an international peer-reviewed journal covering innovative research and practice in the rapidly advancing area of computer science related to new generations of information systems. Taking a multidisciplinary approach, IJSTMIS encourages both fundamental and applied research papers that report on activities related to new research and development at the interface of spatial, temporal and multimedia studies as well as associated fields.

There is a free download of the papers from this first issue.

Inderscience journals to publish expanded papers from Third Workshop on Accelerator Programming using Directives (WACCPD)

Extended versions of papers presented at the Third Workshop on Accelerator Programming using Directives (WACCPD) in conjunction with SC'16 (14 November 2016, Salt lake City, USA) will be published by the following journals:

• Int. J. of Computational Science and Engineering
• Int. J. of High Performance Computing and Networking

Artisanal backpacking in Latin America

A new study of backpackers in Latin America published in the International Journal of Tourism Anthropology suggests that while most follow the pattern of “Western” backpackers as in other parts of the world and adhere to the general code of honour they are more likely to finance their journeys through artisanal activities, such as selling self-made jewellery and other souvenirs.

Many people travel on a low budget in their youth, seeing the world independently of travel agent itineraries, meeting new people taking in the sights and culture of foreign lands. It is often referred to as “backpacking” and is often undertaken during a so-called “gap year” before or after an educational transition. While many backpackers simply travel with money saved beforehand others find bar work or other casual jobs en route in order to help subsidize their travel, subsistence and entertainment. This is the common backpacking code of honour of Westerners that was distilled into five maxims by Peter Welk in the book The Global Nomad:

1. Travel with rather limited expense
2. Get to know new and different people
3. Be free, independent and open-minded
4. Organise the trip to be independent and self-contained
5. Travel for as long as possible

Anne-Katrin Broocks of the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology, at the University of Hamburg, Germany, and Kevin Hannam of Edinburgh Napier University, UK, suggest in this new published paper the addition of one more ‘badge of honour’ which applied to the artisan backpackers in Latin America: namely a deep involvement in the local, often indigenous culture and nature, including interaction with and absorption of knowledge relating to the local populations. The team explains through their ethnographic research how they have discerned differences between the travel plans of Western backpackers and the artisanal backpackers of Latin America.

“Lack of sufficient monetary resources shapes the ways in which artisan backpackers travel,” the team reports. “They use different modes of transport and accommodation to other backpackers and they need to plan their days around their economic activities: crafting and selling their jewellery and other products. … Crucially, the artisan backpackers produce the souvenirs of the backpacker culture in order to be able to participate in it.”

The team has found that because such artisanal backpackers must trade and bargain with members of the public and other travellers, they improve their business skills, their English language skills, and their geographical and touristic knowledge. This not only gives them useful life skills to take to the employment market, sometimes even overseas, when their backpacking expedition comes to an end but it also means they become more embedded with the local population in order to negotiate their own identities.

“For the artisan backpacker the Western mainstream backpacking culture provides unique opportunities to participate in the globalised world and can also open up options for further education or other entrepreneurial activities and helps to build the resources for ongoing mobilities,” the team concludes.


Broocks, A-K. and Hannam, K. (2016) ‘The artisan backpacker: a development in Latin American backpacker tourism’, Int. J. Tourism Anthropology, Vol. 5, Nos. 1/2, pp.152-164.
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