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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.

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.

The purpose of this paper is to assess the present situation in the development of indigenous digital libraries in India. The study aims to evaluate different retrieval features of Indian digital libraries, especially those provide access to multilingual and multimedia documents.

For this study, eight digital libraries originated in India, which are available in 24×7 timeframe and accessible worldwide through the internet, have been identified and selected. The retrieval features and other information on these digital libraries have been collected mostly from their respective websites and from other published literature, annual reports, etc.

The paper finds that Indian digital libraries provide universal access to informative and culturally rich digital content related to South Asian region. The digitisation efforts in Indian institutions make these digital libraries operational.

The institutional repositories and open access archives of Indian institutions that give access to the current research literature are not included in this study, because their retrieval features are mostly similar to each other as they use either DSpace or GNU EPrints open source software.

Indigenous digital libraries in India provide universal access to information and knowledge related to culture and heritage of people of South Asian counties. This study gives an insight on how diverse contents are integrated and disseminated to the end‐users in a user‐friendly manner. This study also indicates research initiatives on different aspects of multilingual contents in this region.

No such evaluation on Indian digital libraries has been done from the perspective of information retrieval features. This study will generate new knowledge in area of indigenous digital libraries in a developing country like India. This study is also an attempt to popularise Indian indigenous digital libraries among the world community.

The International Centre in Paris of the International Serials Data System (ISDS) maintains the database of world serial publications and functions through a network of national and regional centres in various countries. ISDS is an intergovernmental organization established within the framework of the Unesco‐UNISIST programme. The Indian National Centre for ISDS was set up in January 1986 at the Indian National Scientific Documentation Centre (INSDOC), New Delhi, for identification, registration, creation and maintenance of records of serial publications published in India, as well as for monitoring and promoting the use of International Standard Serial Numbers (ISSN). So far, printed Data Transmittal Sheets (DTS) have been used by this centre to send data of serial publications to be incorporated in the ISDS database at the International Centre (IC). Now the Indian centre has developed a computerised system by which the data of serial publications can be transferred directly onto computer designed DTS. The database so created has also been used to produce ISDS‐India Bulletin which describes the collection of records of serials published in India.