Incentive or disincentive for research data disclosure? A large-scale empirical analysis and implications for open science policy

When researchers disclose their original data, they can enhance the visibility of their research works and gain more academic credits (credit effect). By contrast, doing so may accelerate the knowledge replacement process, which dissipates the academic credit that their research works may have received (competition effect). In this study, we examine whether and the extent to which scientists gain academic credit for their research works by publicly disclosing their data. Our review of various literature hypothesizes that data-disclosing research gains more academic credit than non-data-disclosing research in the short term. However, this difference gradually disappears and reverses as the competition effect emerges. This pattern is expected to systematically differ depending on the academic reputation of the journals where the data-disclosing research is published. We empirically test the derived hypotheses by analyzing the metadata of over 310,000 Web of Science Core Collection (WoS CC)-indexed journal articles published in 2010. Our analysis supports both hypotheses. The present study contributes to the on-going policy discussion about the need for institutional measures to promote disclosure of research data by scientists.     

A fad or future of IT?: A comprehensive literature review on the cloud computing research

Cloud computing is now a global trend and during the past decade, has drawn attention from both academic and business communities. Although the evolution of cloud computing has not reached the maturity level, there is still adequate research about the topic. The main purpose of this paper is to examine the development and evolution of cloud computing over time. A content analysis was conducted for 236 scholarly journal articles, which were published between 2009 and 2014 in order to (i) identify the possible trends and changes in cloud computing over the six years, (ii) compare publishing productivity of journals about the cloud computing subject, and (iii) guide future research about cloud computing. The results show that the majority of the cloud computing research is about “cloud computing adoption” (19%), and it was followed by the “legal and ethical issues” of cloud computing (15%). It is also found that “cloud computing for mobile applications” (6%), “benefits & challenges of cloud computing” (5%) and “energy consumption dimension of cloud computing” (4%) are the least attention-grabbing themes in the literature. However, “cloud computing for mobile applications” and “energy consumption dimension of cloud computing” themes have become popular in the last two years, so they are expected to be trendy topics of the near future. Finally, another finding of this study is that the majority of the articles were published by engineering, information systems or technical journals such as “IT Professional Magazine”, “International Journal of Information Management” and “Mobile Networks and Applications”. It seems as if this topic is generally ignored by the managerial and organizational journals even though the impact of cloud computing on organizations and institutions is immense and is in need of investigation.     

Digital transformation of everyday life – How COVID-19 pandemic transformed the basic education of the young generation and why information management research should care?

Children of today have been surrounded by digital technology since their birth. However, children of today are not equally equipped for their technology rich future: various kinds of digital divides still prevail in the society and affect the young generation and their digital futures. Schools and education of children should undergo an extensive digital transformation to be able to meet the needs of the young generation and their digitalized future. The COVID-19 pandemic has suddenly and abruptly forced schools and education indeed to engage in such a transformation. In this study we examine the digital transformation initiated by the COVID-19 pandemic in the basic education of the young generation, the variety of digital divides emerging and reinforced, and the possible barriers reported along the way. We argue that information management research should better acknowledge children, their digitalized everyday life and their basic education as significant areas of concern. We should understand them as well as allow them to shape the education we offer in the context of higher education, but we should also aim at influencing the basic education of the young generation – for the purpose of equipping them with important skills and competencies for their digital futures but also for the purpose of arousing their interest in this important field, maybe even as a career option.     

The challenges of data usage for the United States’ COVID-19 response

During the coronavirus pandemic, policy makers need to interpret available public health data to make decisions affecting public health. However, the United States’ coronavirus response faced data gaps, inadequate and inconsistent definitions of data across different governmental jurisdictions, ambiguous timing in reporting, problems in accessing data, and changing interpretations from scientific institutions. These present numerous problems for the decision makers relying on this information. This paper documents some of the data pitfalls in coronavirus public health data reporting, as identified by the authors in the course of supporting data management for New England’s coronavirus response. We provide recommendations for individuals to collect data more effectively during emergency situations such as a COVID-19 surge, as well as recommendations for institutions to provide more meaningful data for various users to access. Through this, we hope to motivate action to avoid data pitfalls during public health responses in the future.     

Who do you trust? The digital destruction of shared situational awareness and the COVID-19 infodemic

Developments in centrally managed communications (e.g. Twitter, Facebook) and service (e.g. Uber, airbnb) platforms, search engines and data aggregation (e.g. Google) as well as data analytics and artificial intelligence, have created an era of digital disruption during the last decade. Individual user profiles are produced by platform providers to make money from tracking, predicting, exploiting and influencing their users’ decision preferences and behavior, while product and service providers transform their business models by targeting potential customers with more accuracy. There have been many social and economic benefits to this digital disruption, but it has also largely contributed to the digital destruction of mental model alignment and shared situational awareness through the propagation of mis-information i.e. reinforcement of dissonant mental models by recommender algorithms, bots and trusted individual platform users (influencers). To mitigate this process of digital destruction, new methods and approaches to the centralized management of these platforms are needed to build on and encourage trust in the actors that use them (and by association trust in their mental models). The global ‘infodemic’ resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020, highlights the current problem confronting the information system discipline and the urgency of finding workable solutions.     

“Context” in healthcare information technology resistance: A systematic review of extant literature and agenda for future research

Resistance to Healthcare Information Technologies (HIT) continues to be a major challenge that hampers the realization of benefits. Attending to the noted significance of “context” in IT resistance, we carried out this review to understand how the “context” of healthcare in the extant HIT resistance literature has been studied. Based on a review of HIT resistance across 19 IS journals and 5 major IS conferences we organize and summarize the literature around the interaction of people, practice, and technology and provide several significant possibilities for future research.     

Nanotechnology for the management of COVID-19 during the pandemic and in the post-pandemic eraOA

Following the global COVID-19 pandemic,nanotechnology has been at the forefront of research efforts and enables the fast development of diagnostic tools,vaccines and antiviral treatment for this novel virus(SARS-CoV-2).In this review,we first summarize nanotechnology with regard to the detection of SARS-C oV-2,including nanoparticle-based techniques such as rapid antigen testing,and nanopore-based se quencing and sensing techniques.Then we investigate nanote chnology as it applies to the develop...     

Retweets of officials’ alarming vs reassuring messages during the COVID-19 pandemic: Implications for crisis management

Coronavirus related discussions have spiraled at an exponential rate since its initial outbreak. By the end of May, more than 6 million people were diagnosed with this infection. Twitter witnessed an outpouring of anxious tweets through messages associated with the spread of the virus. Government and health officials replied to the troubling tweets, reassuring the public with regular alerts on the virus's progress and information to defend against the virus. We observe that social media users are worried about Covid 19-related crisis and we identify three separate conversations on virus contagion, prevention, and the economy. We analyze the tone of officials’ tweet text as alarming and reassuring and capture the response of Twitter users to official communications. Such studies can provide insights to health officials and government agencies for crisis management, specifically regarding communicating emergency information to the public via social media for establishing reassurance.     

A taste for science? PhD scientists’ academic orientation and self-selection into research careers in industry

Recent research on industrial and academic science draws on the notion that academically trained scientists have a strong “taste for science”. However, little attention has been paid to potential heterogeneity in researchers’ taste for science and to potential selection effects into careers in industry versus academia. Using survey data from over 400 science and engineering PhD students, we examine the extent to which PhD students’ taste for science (e.g., desire for independence, publishing, peer recognition, and interest in basic research) and other individual characteristics predict preferences for research careers in industry versus academia. Our results suggest that PhD students who prefer industrial employment show a weaker “taste for science”, a greater concern for salary and access to resources, and a stronger interest in downstream work compared to PhD students who prefer an academic career. Our findings have important implications for innovation research as well as for managers and policy makers.     

How do men and women differ in research collaborations? An analysis of the collaborative motives and strategies of academic researchers

Do men and women academic faculty vary in their research collaboration patterns and strategies? This straightforward question does not lend itself to a straightforward answer. A great many sex-correlated variables could possibly mitigate the relationship of sex and collaboration. If one finds sex-correlated differences in the number of collaborators, can one infer that there is something intrinsic to men's and women's work strategies and preferences? Or would such differences owe instead to women's and men's different positions in work structures and hierarchies? The focus here is on two sets of research collaboration variables, numbers of collaborators and the collaboration strategies employed. The study uses questionnaire data from the U.S. National Survey of Academic Scientists (n = 1714) and tests several hypotheses about collaboration numbers and strategies. Regression results indicate, counter to the core hypotheses and almost all published literature, that in a properly specified model, one taking into account such factors as tenure, discipline, family status and doctoral cohort, women actually have somewhat more collaborators on average than do men. For both men and women, those with more industrial interactions and those affiliated with university research centers have more collaborators. Men and women differ in their collaborator choice strategies. Men are more likely to be oriented to “instrumental,” and “experience” strategies, while both men and women are motivated by “mentoring” strategies. Regression analyses show that for both men and women, having a coherent collaborator choice strategy predicts the number of collaborators.     

How can tacit knowledge be shared more in organizations? A multidimensional approach to the role of social capital and locus of control

This multidimensional study looks at the influence of social capital and internal vs external locus of control on tacit knowledge-sharing intention and behaviour, and the relationship between the two. The relations studied within the framework of the proposed model are tested by regression analyses. The findings indicate that social capital and its basic structural, cognitive, and relational dimensions tend to increase tacit knowledge-sharing intention, which gradually turns into behaviour because, according to Ajzen’s theory of planned behaviour, behavioural intention is the immediate antecedent to behaviour (or according to Ajzen’s theory of planned behaviour, a person’s intention to perform a behaviour increases as subjective norms become more favourable). It is further concluded that having an internal locus of control increases both the intentions and behaviour, whereas external locus of control only increases the behaviour. The study also concludes that tacit knowledge-sharing intention gradually turns into sharing behaviour. The study is considered to contribute to the field of knowledge management in various ways. In this study a multidimensional survey of 42 questions was used to investigate the research topic and its sub-dimensions, and the data were collected via face-to-face interviews. The population of the study was 106 nursing students, and all components of the research universe were reached. It was found that social capital positively affects and increases tacit knowledge-sharing intentions and behaviour. A research model based on the conceptual framework was developed and research questions were addressed by means of this model and the findings.     

Innovation with ‘Chinese’ characteristics? Reflecting on the implications of an ethnic-based paradigm of management and innovation

Cultural studies seem to dominate the field of management and innovation in China. Researchers have defined and considered Confucianism and a number of common, transnational Asian/Chinese values and practices allegedly unifying China and parts of East Asia. These values and practices have been erected as the cultural pillars of ‘Chinese management’, ‘Chinese entrepreneurship’ and, more recently, ‘indigenous innovation’ in the ethnic Chinese world and now mainland China. We believe these values and practices, frequently claimed as unique and fueling innovation in Chinese firms, to be potentially manipulated for strategic purposes, by political authorities as well as business organizations. This paper examines the aforementioned premises and questions the notions of Chinese ethnicity, values, management and innovation from political and strategic perspectives. We first present the emergence of Chinese values and Chinese management. We then consider this emergence in relation to political agendas and the renewal of Asianism or New Confucianism. The second part of the paper analyzes how such values and ethnicity can be utilized by entrepreneurs for both defensive and offensive business purposes. We then illustrate our debate with some reflections on the Shanzhai form of indigenous innovation before concluding with implications for researchers, managers and entrepreneurs and discussing the dangers of exoticism and avenues for future empirical research.     

Opinion Paper: “So what if ChatGPT wrote it?” Multidisciplinary perspectives on opportunities,challenges and implications of generative conversational AI for research,practice and policy

Transformative artificially intelligent tools, such as ChatGPT, designed to generate sophisticated text indistinguishable from that produced by a human, are applicable across a wide range of contexts. The technology presents opportunities as well as, often ethical and legal, challenges, and has the potential for both positive and negative impacts for organisations, society, and individuals. Offering multi-disciplinary insight into some of these, this article brings together 43 contributions from experts in fields such as computer science, marketing, information systems, education, policy, hospitality and tourism, management, publishing, and nursing. The contributors acknowledge ChatGPT’s capabilities to enhance productivity and suggest that it is likely to offer significant gains in the banking, hospitality and tourism, and information technology industries, and enhance business activities, such as management and marketing. Nevertheless, they also consider its limitations, disruptions to practices, threats to privacy and security, and consequences of biases, misuse, and misinformation. However, opinion is split on whether ChatGPT’s use should be restricted or legislated. Drawing on these contributions, the article identifies questions requiring further research across three thematic areas: knowledge, transparency, and ethics; digital transformation of organisations and societies; and teaching, learning, and scholarly research. The avenues for further research include: identifying skills, resources, and capabilities needed to handle generative AI; examining biases of generative AI attributable to training datasets and processes; exploring business and societal contexts best suited for generative AI implementation; determining optimal combinations of human and generative AI for various tasks; identifying ways to assess accuracy of text produced by generative AI; and uncovering the ethical and legal issues in using generative AI across different contexts.     

Artificial intelligence for decision making in the era of Big Data – evolution,challenges and research agenda

Artificial intelligence (AI) has been in existence for over six decades and has experienced AI winters and springs. The rise of super computing power and Big Data technologies appear to have empowered AI in recent years. The new generation of AI is rapidly expanding and has again become an attractive topic for research. This paper aims to identify the challenges associated with the use and impact of revitalised AI based systems for decision making and offer a set of research propositions for information systems (IS) researchers. The paper first provides a view of the history of AI through the relevant papers published in the International Journal of Information Management (IJIM). It then discusses AI for decision making in general and the specific issues regarding the interaction and integration of AI to support or replace human decision makers in particular. To advance research on the use of AI for decision making in the era of Big Data, the paper offers twelve research propositions for IS researchers in terms of conceptual and theoretical development, AI technology-human interaction, and AI implementation.     

A Victorian hope for aerial navigation: Argyll as a theorist of flight and the first president of the Aëronautical Society of Great Britain

In 1866 the Aëronautical Society of Great Britain was founded with George Douglas Campbell, 8th Duke of Argyll (1823–1900) as first president, and patron. The purpose of the society was to further the study of aerial navigation as well as to make aeronautics a respectable science, and today the society--now the Royal Aeronautical Society--serves as a professional body dedicated to aerospace research. There were two fundamental areas of scientific knowledge key to the society in its initial decades: 1) a detailed understanding of the principles of bird flight, and 2) the practical application of that knowledge in the construction of flying machines. Argyll firmly belonged to the former being a well-seasoned ornithologist and theorist of flight, and, with the publication of his best-selling book The Reign of Law (1867), was one of the first to popularise the theoretical principles of bird flight. In this paper, I examine the relationship between bird and mechanical flight through Argyll's ornithological studies, with a focus on the various factors early in Argyll's life that led to his eventual position as president of the Aëronautical Society. By analysing the influence of his family relations, home environment and religious convictions, I show how Argyll’s scientific undertakings existed as part of a wider network of theistic Victorian aristocrats who contributed to the creation and professionalization of scientific disciplines in a way that contrasted markedly with the methods of many of the scientific naturalists.     

Can people hear others’ crying?: A computational analysis of help-seeking on Weibo during COVID-19 outbreak in China

Social media like Weibo has become an important platform for people to ask for help during COVID-19 pandemic. Using a complete dataset of help-seeking posts on Weibo during the COVID-19 outbreak in China (N = 3,705,188), this study mapped their characteristics and analyzed their relationship with the epidemic development at the aggregate level, and examined the influential factors to determine whether and the extent the help-seeking crying could be heard at the individual level using computational methods for the first time. It finds that the number of help-seeking posts on Weibo has a Granger causality relationship with the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases with a time lag of eight days. This study then proposes a 3C framework to examine the direct influence of content, context, and connection on the responses (measured by retweets and comments) and assistance that help-seekers might receive as well as their indirect effects on assistance through the mediation of both retweets and comments. The differential influences of content (theme and negative sentiment), context (Super topic community, spatial location of posting, and the period of sending time), and connection (the number of followers, whether mentioning others, and verified status of authors and sharers) have been reported and discussed.