Search results

The authors systematically review empirical dyadic service encounter research published in top-tier journals between 1972 and 2022.

The authors employed bibliometric techniques, co-citation analysis and bibliographic coupling analysis to map schools of thought and research frontiers within the dyadic service encounter literature. In total, the authors analyzed 155 articles. To ensure inclusion of high-quality research, the authors screened articles from 139 journals with “4” or “4*” ratings on the 2021 Chartered Association of Business Schools (ABS) journal list, in addition to articles published in three service sector-specific journals: Journal of Service Management, Journal of Services Marketing and Journal of Service Theory and Practice.

The authors' co-citation analysis identified four distinct clusters within the dyadic service encounter literature: (1) shaping and explaining service encounters; (2) emotions in service work; (3) modeling, manipulating and measuring encounter service quality and (4) emotional labor and regulation in dyadic service encounters. Furthermore, the authors' bibliographic coupling analysis generated three research clusters: (1) service encounter characteristics; (2) emotions and emotional labor and (3) service encounter interaction content.

The authors' comprehensive review synthesizes knowledge, summarizing similarities among research clusters within the service encounter realm. Noteworthy are research clusters that clarify the emotion-based underpinnings and reciprocal nature of behaviors and emotions within dyadic encounters. By conducting complementary bibliometric analyses, the authors trace the evolution of the service encounter literature, providing an overview of the present state of dyadic service encounter research. These analyses offer valuable insights into the current landscape of the field, identifying future dyadic service encounter research opportunities.

Peer-reviewed indexable journals have expanded in recent decades as a result, in part, of the value given to research productivity (measured through citations). Latin American journals have grown prompted by the open access (OA) movement, the emergence of regional repositories/indexes, and policies linking institutional rankings and faculty salaries/promotions to indexed publications. This study’s aim was to map the ways Chilean, Colombian, and Venezuelan universities support journal publication. This qualitative study uses Margison and Rhoades’ (2002) Glonacal Agency Heuristic to describe factors that shape higher education (i.e., global, national, and local dimensions), adding university as unit of analysis. Semi-structured in-depth interviews from a previous study, current institutional documents, and websites of 12 major universities from Chile, Venezuela, and Colombia conformed the data of the study. Besides the most prestigious global indexes (Web of Science and Scopus) three regional repositories/indexes, Latindex, SciELO, and RedALyC, have played an important role as countries link faculty salaries/promotions and university ranking systems to publications included in one or more of these services. Latindex collaborates with national science and technology agencies, SciELO has country chapters based at universities (Colombia and Venezuela), and RedALyC works with individual institutions and journals. At the national level, Chile has mechanisms to provide funding for the publication and/or upgrade of journals and incentives to institutions for publications in indexed journals. Colombia’s journal evaluation system Publindex links articles in indexed journals to salary increases in public universities, standard that is also used by private institutions to grant monetary incentives to faculty for publications. Venezuela used to have a funding and publication incentive system that was discontinued in the last decade. Latin American journals are mainly published by universities. Institutions in this study have implemented strategies to support journals such as institutional repositories, discontinuation of print journals, technology support for OA publication, and funding mechanisms.

This study aims to investigate the research productivity of library and information science (LIS) authors affiliated with the 22 countries of the Arab League. It also identifies the top countries, organizations, authors, journals, natures of collaboration, and frequently used keywords in LIS research in the Arab world.

Bibliometric methods were used to evaluate the research performance of the authors affiliated with library organizations in the Arab region. The Elsevier Scopus database was selected for data retrieval. A comprehensive search strategy was adopted to retrieve 863 publications contributed by LIS authors affiliated with the Arab countries. VOS viewer, Biblioshiny, BiblioAnalyitics, Microsoft Access and Microsoft Excel were used for data visualization and analysis.

This paper presents the dynamics and the state of the LIS research in the Arab region published between 1951 and 2021. The results of the study have highlighted an upward trend in the growth of the publications, especially in the past four years. The largest number of studies were published in the year 2020. The country-wise analysis ranked Kuwait and Saudi Arabia as the top LIS research producing countries with five and four researchers, respectively. The Kuwait University, the King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals and the Imam Abdulrahman Bin Faisal University were the three most productive organizations. Academic libraries, social media, bibliometrics, information-seeking behavior, information literacy and knowledge management were identified as the major areas of interest for the researchers. Internet and open access were topics that had gained recent popularity, while the digital library, research data management, green librarianship, link data, cloud computing, library leadership, library automation and artificial intelligence were identified as areas requiring further attention. Furthermore, the single-author pattern was found to be the most preferred pattern.

The findings of this study would help prospective researchers in choosing the neglected areas of research that require further investigation. They would also help policymakers in identifying factors that need more attention and allocation of research funds.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first comprehensive bibliometric study that presents a holistic picture of the LIS research in the Arab region.

With the rise of alternate discovery services, such as Google Scholar, in conjunction with the increase in open access content, researchers have the option to bypass academic libraries when they search for and retrieve scholarly information. This state of affairs implies that academic libraries exist in competition with these alternate services and with the patrons who use them, and as a result, may be disintermediated from the scholarly information seeking and retrieval process. Drawing from decision and game theory, bounded rationality, information seeking theory, citation theory, and social computing theory, this study investigates how academic librarians are responding as competitors to changing scholarly information seeking and collecting practices. Bibliographic data was collected in 2010 from a systematic random sample of references on CiteULike.org and analyzed with three years of bibliometric data collected from Google Scholar. Findings suggest that although scholars may choose to bypass libraries when they seek scholarly information, academic libraries continue to provide a majority of scholarly documentation needs through open access and institutional repositories. Overall, the results indicate that academic librarians are playing the scholarly communication game competitively.

As the demand for new services strains library resources, directors of research libraries must practice efficient cost management and demonstrate alignment with institutional objectives. For technical services, this requires managing the effective cost of metadata services, assessing core functions, and evaluating operational performance. This paper uses Complex Adaptive Systems (CASs) as a framework to expose the network of local and global dependencies that currently define the field of operation for technical services. Comparative analyses using a CASs framework were conducted on reports by the Library of Congress, the Heads of Technical Services in Large Research Libraries Interest Group, and the British Library. Each report addresses financial pressures placed on bibliographic control services in response to the 2008 recession. Statements within the reports were assigned to one of three dominant systems: bibliographic control, institutional identification, and distributive networks. The statements were then mapped to the CASs characteristics to determine environmental pressures and areas of adaptation. The reports exposed long-standing dependencies that tie local bibliographic control to a complex network of external agencies. Institutional shifts toward user-centered services coupled with growing fiscal restraint has disrupted the stability of these networks. The analyses found that in all cases network instability led to localized institutional adaptation to existing economic pressures. The paper recommends applying a CASs model to assess the alignment of distributed metadata standards and systems development to local institutional objectives.

Journal of services marketing (JSM) is a leading journal that has published cutting-edge research in services marketing over the past 34 years. The main objective of this paper is to provide a retrospective of the thematic structure of papers published in JSM over its publication history.

This study uses bibliometric methods to present a retrospective overview of JSM themes between 1987 and 2019. Using keywords co-occurrence analysis, this paper unveils the thematic structure of JSM’s most prolific themes. Bibliographic coupling analysis uncovers the research trends of the journal.

Leading authors, leading institutions, authors’ affiliated countries and critically, the dominant themes of JSM are identified. As its founding, JSM has published approximately 40 papers each year, with 2019 being its most productive year. On average, lead JSM authors to collaborate with 1.30 others. Keywords co-occurrence analysis identifies nine prominent thematic clusters, namely, “marketing to service”, “quality, satisfaction and delivery systems”, “service industries”, “relationship marketing”, “service failure, complaining and recovery”, “service dominant logic”, “technology, innovation and design”, “wellbeing” and “service encounters”. Bibliographic coupling analysis groups JSM papers into four clusters, namely, “brand & customer engagement behaviour”, “service co-creation”, “service encounters & service recovery” and “social networking”.

This study is the first to analyse the thematic structure of JSM themes over its history. The themes are analysed across time periods and then compared to dominant themes identified in contemporary service research agendas. Recommendations are made based on the gaps found. This retrospective review will be useful to numerous key stakeholders including the editorial board and both existing and aspiring JSM contributors. The selection of literature is confined to Scopus.

JSM’s retrospection is likely to attract readership to the journal. The study’s recommendations regarding which areas have matured and which are still ripe for future contributions will offer useful guidelines for all stakeholders.

The purpose of this paper is to review and analyze the modularity literature to identify the established and emerging perspectives.

A systematic literature search and review was conducted through the use of bibliometrics and network analysis. The analysis identified structure within the literature, which revealed how the research area evolved between 1990 and 2015. Based on this search, the paper establishes the basis for analyzing the structure of modularity literature.

Factors were identified within the literature, demonstrating how it has evolved from a primary focus on the modularity of products to a broader view of the applicability of modularity. Within the last decade, numerous research areas have emerged within the broader area of modularity. Through core-periphery analysis, eight emerging sub-research areas are identified, of which one is the study of modularity in the context of services.

Although bibliographic methods are limited as they are based on common citations within the field, they enable systematic analysis and the identification of structure within an emergent field of research. Such analysis has implications by for a growing and inter-disciplinary field like modularity by providing overview and suggesting future directions.

This paper contributes by conducting a systematic review based on the citation structure within modularity and identifies the established and emerging areas of research on modularity.

Owing to the dramatic rise of FinTech credit in the financial sector, this study describes its knowledge and intellectual structure and paves the way for future research.

The study employs citation analysis, keyword analysis, co-author analysis, co-citation analysis and bibliographic coupling on 268 peer-reviewed articles published during 2010–2021 and extracted from the Web of Science database.

Research on FinTech credit has picked up momentum from 2016, with majority contributions from China, followed by UK and USA. International Journal of Bank Marketing is found to be the most productive journal. Co-citation analysis reveals that past studies have focused on three dominant themes, viz. (a) factors that influence user intention to adopt technological products and services (b) borrowers' and lenders' characteristics that impact fund-raising in FinTech credit platforms and (c) evolution of FinTech market over the years. Bibliographic coupling reveals that recent trends in FinTech credit include (a) impact of emerging technologies like blockchain, artificial intelligence, big data on financial system, (b) factors that encourage consumers to adopt the FinTech products and services, (c) mechanisms by which FinTechs have transformed formal credit markets, (d) factors that lead to successful fundraising in FinTech platforms and (e) critical perspectives on digital lending platforms.

To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is a pioneering study undertaking an exhaustive analysis of FinTech credit as a research area. The study offers valuable insights on potential topics of research in FinTech credit domain like investigating Balance Sheet Lending Model, investigating the impact of FinTechs on financial system, and new markets by collaborating with scholars of other regions.