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Open access is a new scholarly publishing model that has appeared in place of the commercial publishing model. The aim of this study was to investigate the level of awareness, use and attitudes of the Indian students in higher educational institutions about scholarly open access.

Survey method was used in the study. The sample population of the study was 212 Indian students belonging to different higher educational institutions in India.

The results of the study reveal a gloomy picture about the open access (OA) awareness and use among Indian students. Unfamiliarity with the OA journals and high publication fee were the main obstacles for the students not to publish in OA journals. However, a majority of the students reported their willingness to publish in OA journals in future if the obstacles are removed. A very meager ratio of the respondents had published in OA journals so far. In addition, motivational factors for publishing in OA journals were also taken into consideration, and respondent's indicated winning research grants, great impact and higher citations as main factors to publish in OA journals.

This study is geographically limited to the students of the higher educational institutions located in India.

This study will help to understand the involvement and behavior of the Indian students toward scholarly open access. The study will also guide what measures need to be taken in the take up of open access movement.

Institutional repositories appeared to be relatively a novel term for the respondents, and in order to get the citation advantages and higher visibility, librarians can make an effort to persuade students to publish their research work in open access journals and institutional/subject repositories. The study recommends that institutions need to take appropriate measures to inform students about the importance and overall benefits associated with using of OA platforms in their scholarly work.

This study aims to examine the key determinants of corporate social responsibility (CSR) disclosure of all listed banks that operate their function in an emerging market, Pakistan.

This study applied the principles of systems-oriented theories such as legitimacy, stakeholder and agency theory. The hypothesis is linking the bank’s social disclosure and its determinants are developed. The relevant data was gathered from the bank’s annual reports and Pakistan Stock Exchange from 2008 to 2018. Further, governance attributes and performance measures are used as the predictor variable and the CSR score as the predicted variable. This study applied panel data analysis on the sampled banks to examine the proposed hypothesis for empirical estimation.

This study’s inclusive results confirm that the hypothesized determinants of board size, foreign directors on board and female directors on board positively impact the CSR disclosure potential. Board size significantly explains the CSR disclosure in all bank samples. The determined performance measures, profitability and liquidity show a significant positive relationship with CSR disclosure except for few exceptions.

This study’s results lack generalizability due to its unique setting; future researchers can extend the research scope in national–international settings and a regional context.

This study enriches the literature on CSR disclosure determinants and is relevant to practice in an emerging context. It can be helpful from a policy perspective; institutions (bodies) that regulate banks should recognize the governance and performance aspects essential to enhancing CSR disclosure and enhancing the bank’s performance hence value.

This research offers empirical evidence that sheds light on the key governance attributes and performance measures that partially affect CSR disclosure and its extent. In doing so, this study’s findings contribute to the literature significantly, along with regulators, shareholders, deposit holders, individual–institutional investors.

Link prediction in social networks refers toward inferring the new interactions among the users in near future. Citation networks are constructed based on citing each other papers. Reciprocal link prediction in citations networks refers toward inferring about getting a citation from an author, whose work is already cited by you. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

In this paper, the authors study the extent to which the information of a two-way citation relationship (called reciprocal) is predictable. The authors propose seven different features based on papers, their authors and citations of each paper to predict reciprocal links.

Extensive experiments are performed on CiteSeer data set by using three classification algorithms (decision trees, Naive Bayes, and support vector machines) to analyze the impact of individual, category wise and combination of features. The results reveal that it is likely to precisely predict 96 percent of reciprocal links. The study delivers convincing evidence of presence of the underlying equilibrium amongst reciprocal links.

It is not a generic method for link prediction which can work for different networks with relevant features and parameters.

This paper predicts the reciprocal links to show who is citing your work to collaborate with them in future.

The proposed method will be helpful in finding collaborators and developing academic links.

The proposed method uses reciprocal link prediction for bibliographic networks in a novel way.

The use of social media is prevalent and having the largest number of members than any other online platform available on the internet. Members of all age groups use social media websites according to their needs. This study aims to investigate the impact of social media usage on the academic performance of college students in Kashmir.

A structured questionnaire was formulated and a survey was carried out to collect data from the undergraduate students of different government colleges in Kashmir. The questionnaires were distributed randomly among both, male and female of the first, second and third year students of different undergraduate programs.

The findings show a majority of the students use social media networking sites to fulfill their educational needs. YouTube is the most largely used social media network among undergraduate students. A majority of the students feel that social media networks are easy to use and they have been using these sites for the past three years. The use of social media greatly helps the students to share knowledge and information with others, to improve their academic grades and to improve their reading and writing skills. A majority of the students spend an hour in using social media networks. Students use their laptops, mobile phones and personal computers to access social media websites.

This study will help to highlight the important role of social media networks in the pedagogical activities of students.

This study affirms that students do use social media networking sites for academic purposes, which is a good factor to improve their academic skills and grades. Teachers must encourage their students to make the best use of social media networking sites for recreational and academic purposes.

This study examines the relationship between green intellectual capital (GIC) and competitive advantage (CA) and proposes the moderating role of corporate philanthropy types (cash, in-kind and both) during the COVID-19 pandemic. In particular, this study investigates the types of corporate philanthropy, strengthening the link between GIC and CA for Chinese listed firms during a pandemic.

Cross-sectional data were collected from 248 chief executive officers (CEOs) of Chinese firms listed on the Shanghai Stock Exchange through a structured questionnaire. Regression analysis was employed to test the proposed hypotheses.

The findings reveal that all types of GIC positively influence a firm's CA. Furthermore, all three types of philanthropy – cash, in-kind and both – moderate the relationship between GIC and CA. However, the intensity of moderation was higher in the case of in-kind philanthropy than in the other two types.

To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first empirical study to examine the relationship between GIC (considering its three components: human, structural and relational capital) and CA in China. The study finds different types of philanthropy as moderating variables to better explain the relationship between GIC and CA. Further, it contributes to a new line of research that aims to study philanthropic aspects connected to the GIC debate.

This study aims to investigate the role of dynamic capabilities (DCs) in the financial performance of the small and medium enterprises (SMEs) during COVID-19. Furthermore, it took chief executive officer gender to moderate the relationship between DCs and financial performance.

This study used the survey approach to collect the data. Regression analysis was used on 563 responses to test the proposed hypotheses.

The results showed that DCs have a significant positive effect on the SME’s operating level and revenues. Moreover, it also moderates the DCs and financial performance during COVID-19. The results revealed that firms that used the DCs during COVID-19 not only survive during the COVID-19 tough time but also enjoyed a decent revenue level.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first study to establish the link between DCs and SMEs operating and revenue level during the COVID-19 pandemic in Pakistani settings.

This study develops a conceptual framework to examine (1) whether global retailers' CSR actions in the form of in-kind charitable contribution affect consumers' attribution of CSR to intrinsic motives, (2) whether consumers' attribution of CSR to intrinsic motives affects brand-self connection and (3) whether the cultural factors of self-transcendence and conservation moderate the relationship between consumers' attribution of CSR to intrinsic motives and brand-self connection.

Data are collected from two culturally diverse countries, the US and China, each of which managed the pandemic in different ways. Before hypothesis testing, the invariance of measures is established. To measure differences between the groups, a multi-group analysis is conducted.

Global retailers' in-kind charitable contribution is a significant drivers of consumers' attribution of CSR to intrinsic motives, and attribution of CSR to intrinsic motives has a positive effect on consumer brand-self connection. Both of the cultural values, self-transcendence and conservation, moderate the relationship between attribution of CSR to intrinsic motives and brand-self connection. Self-transcendence is a strong moderator in China, whereas conservation moderates strongly in the US. All of the relationships differ significantly between the groups (US versus China).

To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to investigate empirically the role of in-kind charitable contribution in creating an attribution of CSR to intrinsic motives that eventually leads to strong brand-self connection in the COVID-19 context. The study provides novel insights into how consumer behavior differs across two significantly different cultures with regard to COVID-19-related CSR. The findings help international marketers manage uncertainties and crisis and to design their CSR-based marketing programs and develop positioning strategies across cultures.

The concept of online shopping has been in vogue for the past two decades and is on the rise. Even developing countries like Pakistan are using electronic platforms to buy and sell goods and services, and the trend has been increasing ever since the COVID-19 pandemic. Drawing on the expectancy-disconfirmation theory, this study aims to test the e-service quality (E-SQ) and e-customer satisfaction (ECS) linkage with the mediating roles of functional values (FVs) and hedonic values (HVs).

The data have been collected from 298 customers of AliExpress and Daraz e-commerce platforms and analyzed using covariance-based structural equation modeling (CB-SEM).

The results of the study showed a significant positive relationship between E-SQ and ECS and indirect linkage through FVs and HVs have also been established.

E-commerce platforms, particularly in Pakistan, should place a strong emphasis on FVs by providing accurate product details, user-friendly navigation, transparent pricing and streamlined transactions. Customers' trust and confidence will increase if they have a smooth and effective online purchasing experience. Customer satisfaction may be influenced by regular platform functionality and usability changes.

The use of functional and HVs is considered to be a novel factor in testing the relationship between E-SQ and ECS.

This study aims to investigate the perspective of corporate philanthropy during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) in China for firms with various levels of corporate social responsibility (CSR). Specifically, the study appraises the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the stock returns and sustainable development of Chinese-listed companies and determines the likelihood of paying donations vis-à-vis firm reputation.

The study used data from 117 Chinese-listed firms engaged in philanthropy during the COVID-19 pandemic. The authors also utilized the stock returns and cash donation data, and owing to the cross-sectional data and continuous nature of dependent variables, they employed the ordinary least squares regression to test the research hypotheses.

The results show that irresponsible actions have a positive relationship with donations. The study particularly reveals that irresponsible firms have significant negative abnormal returns during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic.

To the best of our knowledge, this is the first empirical study to explore the perspective of corporate philanthropy during the COVID-19 pandemic for companies with different CSR levels. This study contributes to the empirical research on CSR and provides insights for managerial-cum-financial decisions to encourage managers of irresponsible firms to pursue philanthropic behaviors after crisis events.

The purpose of this paper is to empirically capture the impact of a chief executive officer’s (CEO) personal and organizational characteristics on firm performance in the context of a developing country and to explore whether capital structure mediates the relationship between CEO characteristics and firm performance.

In order to test the hypothesized model, CEO duality, tenure and personal characteristics (age, gender and education) were taken as explanatory variables to study their impact on firm performance. Data were collected from 179 Pakistani companies from 2009–2015. The collected data were processed via panel data regression analysis under fixed effect assumptions.

Results show that CEO duality has a negative impact on firm performance and that a CEO with a dual role is more inclined toward debt financing. Moreover, a CEO with a longer tenure tends to be opportunistic and prioritize his/her personal interest while making strategic financial decisions, thus creating agency costs for the firm. Furthermore, CEO characteristics like age, gender and education have significant effects on firm financial decisions and firm performance. Finally, the debt and equity ratio partially mediates the link between CEO characteristics and firm performance.

The findings of this study have limited generalizability due to the specific nature of the sample characteristics.

To the best of the authors knowledge, this study is the first to explore the impact of CEO characteristics on capital structure and firm performance. This work is also the first to explore the mediating role of capital structure in the relationship between CEO characteristics and firm performance by using Pakistani data.