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This study aimed to assess whether sociodemographic variables explain significant differences in attitudes towards transforming academic conferences into more sustainable events.

An analytical model of participants' attitudes towards sustainable conferences based on literature review as well as the theories of reasoned action and planned behaviour was developed and applied to a sample of 532 surveyed individuals from 68 countries who regularly attended academic conferences in the last five years prior to 2020. The results were refined using statistical and computational techniques to achieve more empirically robust conclusions.

Results reveal that sociodemographic variables such as attendees' gender and age explain differences in attitudes. Women and older adults have stronger pro-environmental attitudes regarding event sustainability. On the other hand, attitudes towards more sustainable academic conferences are quite strong and positive overall. More sustainable events' venues, catering, conference materials and accommodations strongly influence attendees' attitudes towards more sustainable conferences. The strength of attitudes was weaker towards transportation.

First, the analyses focused on only aspects related to the attendees' attitudes. Assessing their real behaviour would complete this research. The geographical areas defined by the U.N. and used in this study have the limitation of combining highly developed countries and developing countries in the same geographical area, for example, the Americas and Asia and the Pacific.

Specific socio-demographic variables' effects on attitudes towards sustainable academic conferences can indicate how organisers can best promote these events according to attendees' characteristics and develop differentiated marketing campaigns. For women and older adults, event sustainability should be emphasised as a competitive strategy to promote events and attract these audiences. Marketing strategies for younger attendees (under 30 years old) could focus on technology, networking or attractive social programmes. Sustainable venues, catering, conference materials and accommodations are easier to promote. Event organisers should encourage participants to make more environmentally friendly decisions regarding more sustainable event transport.

A strategy based on promoting the event as contributing to sustainable development could educate attendees and put them on the path to developing stronger positive attitudes regarding sustainability and more sustainable behaviours. Sustainable academic conferences can educate students, organisers, service providers and delegates through their involvement in sustainable practices.

To our best knowledge, this research is the first to assess whether sociodemographic variables explain significant differences in attitudes towards the sustainable transformation of academic conferences.

Gwent Electronic Materials has won its third award under the Department of Trade and Industry's SMART competition scheme.

The paper aims to investigate the impact of the open access movement on the document supply of grey literature.

The paper is based on a comparative survey of five major scientific and technical information centres: The British Library (UK), KM (Canada), INIST-CNRS (France), KISTI (South Korea) and TIB Hannover (Germany).

The five institutions supplied less than 1.8 million supplied items in 2014, i.e. half of the activity in 2004 (−55 per cent). There were 85,000 grey documents, mainly conference proceedings and reports, i.e. 5 per cent of the overall activity, a historically low level compared to 2004 (−72 per cent). At the same time, they continue to expand their open access strategies. Just as in 2004 and 2008, these strategies are specific, and they reflect institutional and national choices rather than global approaches, with two or three common or comparable projects (PubMed Central, national repositories, attribution of DOIs to datasets, dissertations and other objects). In spite of all differences, their development reveals some common features, like budget cuts, legal barriers (copyright), focus on domestic needs and open access policies to foster dissemination and impact of research results. Document supply for corporate customers tends to become a business-to-business service, while the delivery for the public sector relies more, than before, on resource sharing and networking with academic and public libraries. Except perhaps for the TIB Hannover, the declining importance of grey literature points towards their changing role – less intermediation, less acquisition and collection development and more high-value services, more dissemination and preservation capacities designed for the scientific community needs (research excellence, open access, data management, etc.).

The paper is a follow-up study of two surveys published in 2006 and 2009.

Nelco were pleased to announce the appointment of Mr George Grant to the position of Sales Manager from June 1st 1990. Mr Grant, who has considerable stature in the industry and brings a wealth of experience to Nelco from his previous 13 years with Gould Foil Division and more recently as Sales Director with GTS Flexible Materials, will report to Mr Charles Carter, President European Operations.

There are many investigations in design methodologies, but there are also divergences and convergences as there are so many points of view. This study aims to evaluate to corroborate and deepen other researchers’ findings, dissipate divergences and provide directing to future work on the subject from a methodological and convergent perspective.

This study analyzes the previous reviews (about 15 reviews) and based on the consensus and the classifications provided by these authors, a significant sample of research is analyzed in the design for additive manufacturing (DFAM) theme (approximately 80 articles until June of 2017 and approximately 280–300 articles until February of 2019) through descriptive statistics, to corroborate and deepen the findings of other researchers.

Throughout this work, this paper found statistics indicating that the main areas studied are: multiple objective optimizations, execution of the design, general DFAM and DFAM for functional performance. Among the main conclusions: there is a lack of innovation in the products developed with the methodologies, there is a lack of exhaustivity in the methodologies, there are few efforts to include environmental aspects in the methodologies, many of the methods include economic and cost evaluation, but are not very explicit and broad (sustainability evaluation), it is necessary to consider a greater variety of functions, among other conclusions

The novelty in this study is the methodology. It is very objective, comprehensive and quantitative. The starting point is not the case studies nor the qualitative criteria, but the figures and quantities of methodologies. The main contribution of this review article is to guide future work on the subject from a methodological and convergent perspective and this article provides a broad database with articles containing information on many issues to make decisions: design methodology; optimization; processes, selection of parts and materials; cost and product management; mechanical, electrical and thermal properties; health and environmental impact, etc.