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Mandatory auditor firm rotation (mandatory rotation) has been a controversial issue in the United States for many decades. Mandatory rotation has been considered at various times as a means of improving auditor independence. For example, in the United States, the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) has considered mandatory rotation as a solution to the independence problem (PCAOB, 2011) and the European Parliament approved legislation that will require mandatory rotation in the near future (Council of European Union, 2014). The concept of implementing a mandatory rotation policy has been encouraged by some constituents of audited financial statements and rejected by other constituents of audited financial statements. Although there are apparent pros and cons of such a policy, the developmental process of such a policy in this country has not necessarily been an open-democratic, objective process. Universal mandatory rotation may or may not be the ideal solution; however, an open-democratic, objective process is needed to facilitate the development of a solution that considers the needs of all major stakeholders of audited financial statements – not simply accounting firms and public companies, but also investors. The purpose of this paper is to critically examine key issues relating to mandatory rotation and to encourage and stimulate future research and ongoing dialogue regarding this issue, in spite of efforts by certain constituents to silence the issue. This paper provides an overview of the various reasons, including practical, theoretical, political, and self-motivated reasons, why a mandatory rotation policy has not been implemented in the United States in order to address the potential conflict of interest between the auditor and client. This paper will also discuss how some deliberations of mandatory rotation have been flawed. The paper concludes with a summary of key issues along with two approaches for regulators, policy makers, and academics to consider as ways to improve the process and address auditor independence. The authors are not advocating for any specific solution; however, we are advocating for a more objective, unified approach and for the dialogue regarding auditor rotation to continue.

Introduction: Historically, the corporate governance (CG) framework was designed primarily to safeguard the economic interests of shareholders, as a result of political and legal interventions, developing into an effective instrument for stakeholders and society in general.

Purpose: The core objectives of the study include: identifying journals/publications responsible for publishing CG studies in India, key CG issues covered by CG researchers, the amount of high-impact CG literature across different time periods, sectors/industries covered by CG researchers and different research instruments (quantitative or qualitative) used in CG studies in India.

Design/methodology: The chapter used a sample of 130 corporate governance studies that fulfil the selection criteria, drawn from the repository of over 100 reputed journals that are either recognised by the Australian Business Deans Council (ABDC) or indexed by SCOPUS. A systematic literature review has been carried out pertaining to CG issues in India, based on various statistical tools, data, industries, research outlets & citations, etc.

Findings: The results show an overwhelming number of studies have assessed the relationship between CG variables and firm performance, which could be measured through a variety of performance metrics such as ROA and ROI. Apart from empirical analysis, many conceptual studies use repetitive basic statistical tools like descriptive statistics or regression analysis. The chapter offers insights into current achievements and future development.

Originality/value: This bibliometric study is a useful guide for policymakers, corporate leaders, research organisations and management faculty to draw insights from work produced by eminent researchers in GC in India.

Audit committee members (ACMs) play a pivotal role in negotiating disputes between management and the external auditor concerning audit adjustments. Research suggests ACMs support the external auditor when audit adjustment conflicts arise. This study investigated the perceived effect of audit quality indicators (AQIs), through the mediating effect of affective reaction, on an ACM's recommendation for proposed audit adjustments. Audit firm tenure was examined as a moderating factor in both the effect of perceived AQIs on ACM's proposed adjustment and the relationship between perceived AQIs and affective reaction. Results suggested affective reactions created from perceptions of AQIs influence an ACM's decision-making. Audit firm tenure was found to moderate the relationship between perceptions of AQIs and affective reaction while not moderating the relationship between perceptions of AQIs and the ACM's proposed adjustment.

Describes how the idea of normalised impact factor came into being and the method of its determination. In all, five properties of the normalised impact factor have been identified and described. It is observed that the ranking of a journal in its own category is better revealed by the normalised impact factor and the average normalised impact factor seems to provide better indication of the comparative performance of a set of laboratories engaged in diverse areas of research.

A formula for the ranking of scientists based on diachronous citation counts is proposed. The paper generalises the fact that the citation generation potential (CGP) is not the same for all papers, it differs from paper to paper, and also to a certain extent depends on the subject domain of the papers. The method of ranking proposed in no way replaces peer review. It merely acts as an aid for peers to help them arrive at a better judgement.

Symbols for concepts like ‘half life’, ‘impact factor’, ‘normalised impact factor’ and ‘immediacy index’ are proposed and formulas for the determination of their values are provided. The features of the concepts are also highlighted.

Quantum-dot cellular automata (QCA) is a promising technology, which seems to be the prospective substitute for complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS). It is a high speed, high density and low power paradigm producing efficient circuits. These days, most of the smart devices used for computing, make use of random access memory (RAM). To enhance the performance of a RAM cell, researchers are putting effort to minimize its area and access time. Multilayer structures in QCA framework are area efficient, fast and immune to the random interference. Unlike CMOS, QCA multilayer architectures can be designed using active components on different layers. Thus, using multilayer topology in the design of a RAM cell, which is not yet reported in the literature can improve the performance of RAM and hence, the computing device. This paper aims to present the modular design of RAM cell with multilayer structures in the QCA framework. The fundamental modules such as XOR gate, 2:1 multiplexer and D latch are proposed here using multilayer formations with the goal of designing a RAM cell with the provision of read, write, set and reset control.

All the modules used to design a RAM cell are designed using multilayer approach in QCA framework.

The proposed multilayer RAM cell is optimized and has shown an improvement of 20% in cell count, 30% in area, 25% in area latency product and 48.8% in cost function over the other efficient RAM designs with set/reset ability reported earlier. The proposed RAM cell is further analyzed for the fault tolerance and power dissipation.

Due to the multilayer structure, the complexity of the circuit enhances which can be eliminated using simple architectures.

The performance metrics and results obtained establish that the multilayer approach can be implemented in the QCA circuit to produce area efficient and optimized sequential circuits such as a latch, flip flop and memory cells.

This communication describes the building of a list of constructed impact factors (CIF) for biomedical journals not included in the 1996 editions of the Journal Citation Reports (JCR). The online retrieval from the host DIMDI of the data needed for impact factor calculation is described in detail. At present, the CIF list comprises 338 titles. The top 100 (ranked according to their CIFs) are shown. The complete list is available via the World Wide Web at the URL: http://www.medizin.fu‐berlin.de/medbib/CIF/cif.html. The possible usefulness of constructed impact factors for citation and evaluation studies is discussed.

Increasingly, how well organisations innovate is becoming the single most important issue in determining their ultimate success. Referencing a variety of cases primarily drawn from governmental organisations, this paper argues that the key to successful innovation implementation rests on the convergence of three different factors. First, an innovation must be properly framed in terms of stakeholders’ expectations. Secondly, a good internal innovation environment must be present. Finally, the pros of specific attributes of innovations must outweigh their cons. The Eight other conditions, in which one or more of these factors is not positive, result in differing degrees of success and failure, with different implications for organisational outcomes. These eight conditions, and their associated propositions, are discussed in terms of their heuristic value for bridging gaps in differing parties’ understanding of innovation processes and future directions for research, including the interaction of power and type of innovation.