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Most papers and books on conducting literature reviews primarily emphasize achieving technical quality, ensuring reproducibility and validating results. Notwithstanding the need for technical excellence, there is also a need for relevance. The purpose of this study is to address that need and offer practical and constructive suggestions for enhancing the meaningful contribution of a literature review, thereby increasing its impact and relevance for publication.

In this conceptual paper, the authors explore strategies to enhance the relevance and contribution of a literature review. By clarifying the needs of diverse audiences and the principles of generating new insights, the authors provide a broad range of options without being prescriptive. Recognizing that every literature review is unique, this paper contrasts various approaches to offer flexible and adaptable guidance.

Literature reviews can be enjoyable to read and write, offering a wide range of substantial contributions that meet the expectations of readers and journal editors. This paper offers practical suggestions for prospective authors to make their reviews more relevant, invaluable and engaging, and summarizes these suggestions in a comprehensive checklist.

The paper is not exhaustive but rather complements prevalent literature review methodologies.

Existing literature offers limited guidance on enhancing a review’s contribution to science, academic inquiry and society. This paper fills that gap by providing both academic considerations and practical recommendations, drawing on the author’s extensive experience in reviewing and conducting literature reviews.

La mayoría de los artículos y libros sobre la realización de revisiones de literatura enfatizan principalmente la obtención de calidad técnica, asegurando la reproducibilidad y validando resultados. A pesar de la necesidad de excelencia técnica, también existe la necesidad de la relevancia. El presente artículo aborda esa necesidad y tiene como objetivo ofrecer sugerencias prácticas y constructivas para mejorar la contribución significativa de una revisión de literatura, aumentando así su impacto y relevancia para su publicación.

En este artículo conceptual, los autores exploran estrategias para mejorar la relevancia y la contribución de una revisión de literatura. Al clarificar las necesidades de audiencias diversas y los principios para generar nuevos conocimientos, los autores proporcionan una amplia gama de opciones sin ser prescriptivos. Reconociendo que cada revisión de literatura es única, este artículo contrasta varios enfoques para ofrecer orientación flexible y adaptable.

Las revisiones de literatura pueden ser placenteras de leer y escribir, ofreciendo una amplia gama de contribuciones sustanciales que satisfacen las expectativas de los lectores y editores de revistas. Este artículo ofrece sugerencias prácticas para que los autores potenciales hagan que sus revisiones sean más relevantes, valiosas y atractivas, y resume estas sugerencias en una lista de verificación integral.

La literatura existente ofrece una orientación limitada sobre cómo mejorar la contribución de una revisión a la ciencia, la investigación académica y la sociedad. Este artículo cubre ese vacío proporcionando consideraciones académicas y recomendaciones prácticas, basadas en la extensa experiencia de los autores en la revisión y realización de revisiones de literatura.

El artículo no es exhaustivo, sino que complementa las metodologías prevalentes de revisión de literatura.

大多数关于如何进行文献综述的文章和书籍主要强调实现技术质量、确保可重复性和验证结果。尽管技术卓越性至关重要, 但同样需要注重相关性。本文正是为了满足这一需求, 旨在提供实用且建设性的建议, 以增强文献综述的有意义贡献, 从而增加其发表的影响力和相关性。

在这篇概念性文章中, 作者探讨了增强文献综述相关性和贡献的策略。通过阐明多样化受众的需求和生成新见解的原则, 作者提供了广泛的选项, 而不是一味地指示。认识到每篇文献综述都是独一无二的, 本文对比了各种方法, 以提供灵活和适应性的指导。

文献综述可以既有趣味性又富有实质性贡献, 满足读者和期刊编辑的期望。本文为潜在作者提供了实用的建议, 使他们的综述更具相关性、不可或缺且引人入胜, 并将这些建议总结在一个全面的清单中。

现有文献对如何增强综述对科学、学术研究和社会的贡献提供的指导有限。本文通过结合学术考虑和实际建议, 弥补了这一空白, 基于作者在审阅和进行文献综述方面的丰富经验, 提供了独特的见解。

该文章并非详尽无遗, 而是对现有文献综述方法的补充。

The purpose of this paper is to find out which research topics and methods in information science (IS) articles are used in other disciplines as indicated by citations.

The study analyzes citations to articles in IS published in 31 scholarly IS journals in 2015. The study employs content analysis of articles published in 2015 receiving citations from publication venues representing IS and other disciplines in the citation window 2015–2021. The unit of analysis is the article-citing discipline pair. The data set consists of 1178 IS articles cited altogether 25 K times through 5 K publication venues. Each citation is seen as a contribution to the citing document’s discipline by the cited article, which represents some IS subareas and methodologies, and the author team's disciplinary composition, which is inferred from the authors’ affiliations.

The results show that the citation profiles of disciplines vary depending on research topics, methods and author disciplines. Disciplines external to IS are typically cited in IS articles authored by scholars with the same background. Thus, the export of ideas from IS to other disciplines is evidently smaller than the earlier findings claim. IS should not be credited for contributions by other disciplines published in IS literature.

This study is the first to analyze which research topics and methods in the articles of IS are of use in other disciplines as indicated by citations.

The aim of this paper is to generate a streamlined, transparent and effective instrument to fairly measure the contribution made by each student to a group project within a higher education context. The primary aim is to moderate the grades of underperforming students at the end of the project. There is a secondary benefit in alerting underperforming students to raise their contribution mid-task or face a potentially reduced grade at the final stage.

The development of this multi-dimensional instrument is guided by findings from previous research. The quest is to minimise the instructor's administrative work load in applying a moderation-only instrument that is open-source and available at no cost. Based on the literature, the survey instrument seeks to apply a peer-based, equitable and transparent evaluation of each member's contribution to a group task. The survey is applied at mid-task and again at end-task in order to afford underperformers the opportunity to address contribution deficits during the final phase of the project.

The instrument, called TANDEM©, offers a transparent, streamlined, equitable, confidential and practical measure of each student's contribution to a graded group task. Students whose end-task contribution falls below the group average rating receive a proportional reduction in their personal grade. Additionally, the end-task moderation instrument captures a single-item holistic measure of relative contribution that may, in the future, serve as a surrogate for the multi-dimensional measures currently in place.

TANDEM© was developed with group sizes of four or five members in mind. There is no evidence to support its application to three-person groups. Moreover, the application was applied only amongst under-graduate students. It is yet to be applied across post-graduate groups and within online learning environments. Future research into diverse cultural settings would serve to advance understanding of how moderation is perceived across borders.

Several existing group grade moderation methods propose complex algorithms that are “black box” solutions from a student's perspective. In establishing a fair, streamlined, confidential and transparent process for peer-rated moderation, TANDEM© deploys a concise instrument with a relatively small administrative load. TANDEM © may be applied to all groups or can selectively be applied to groups that report moderate, strong or extreme levels of conflict.

Students will appreciate the opportunity to rate peer contributions to group projects. This will dissipate the negative social sentiment that may arise when fellow students benefit from the work of others. Those students seeking conflict resolution within the group will value the transparent and equitable moderation of grades as well as the positive social implications that follow.

This research forms part of an ongoing quest to present a moderation instrument that fairly identifies student contribution to a group project. Whilst the solution proposed is one of many existing alternatives, its focus is on a practical moderation-only instrument that can immediately be applied to a course or major. The benefits lie in the ease of application and minimal administrative workload. This constitutes an original contribution to the individual (course or major) coordinator who seeks to apply a moderation-only instrument without having to commit to an extensive, broad-based group optimisation programme.

The purpose of the paper is to showcase the significant achievements of Egypt's scientists in the 20th century across various fields of study such as medicine, physics, chemistry, biology, math, geology, astronomy and engineering. The paper highlights the struggles and successes of these scientists, as well as the cultural, social and political factors that influenced their lives and work. The aim is to inspire young people to pursue careers in science and make their own contributions to society by presenting these scientists as role models for hard work and dedication. Ultimately, the paper seeks to promote the importance of science and its impact on society.

The purpose of this review is to present the scientific biographies of Egypt's most distinguished scientists, primarily in the field of Natural Sciences, in a balanced and comprehensive manner. The work is objective, honest and abstract, avoiding any bias or exaggeration. The author provides a clear and concise methodology, including a brief introduction to the scientist and their field of study, an explanation of their major contributions, the impact of their work on society, any challenges or obstacles faced during their career and their lasting legacy. The aim is to showcase the important achievements of these scientists, their impact on their respective fields and to inspire future generations to pursue scientific careers.

The group of outstanding scientists in 20th century Egypt were shaped by various factors, including familial upbringing, education, society, political and cultural atmosphere and state support for scientific research. These scientists made significant contributions to various academic disciplines, including medicine, physics, chemistry, biology, mathematics and engineering. Their impact on their communities and cultures has received international acclaim, making them role models for future generations of scientists and researchers. The history of these scientists highlights the importance of educational investments and supporting scientific research to foster innovation and social progress. The encyclopedia serves as a useful tool for students, instructors and education professionals, preserving Egypt's scientific heritage and honouring the scientists' outstanding accomplishments.

The encyclopedia preserves Egypt's scientific heritage, which has been overlooked for political or other reasons. It is a useful tool for a variety of readers, including students, instructors and education professionals, and it offers insights into universally relevant scientific success factors as well as scientific research methodologies. The encyclopedia honours the outstanding scientific accomplishments of Egyptian researchers and their contributions to the world's scientific community.

The practical implications of this paper are several. First, it highlights the importance of education, family upbringing and societal support for scientific research in fostering innovation and social progress. Second, it underscores the need for continued funding and support for scientific research to maintain and build upon the accomplishments of past generations of scientists. Third, it encourages young people to pursue scientific careers and make their own contributions to society. Fourth, it preserves the scientific heritage of Egypt and honors the contributions of its outstanding scientists. Finally, it serves as a useful tool for students, instructors and education professionals seeking to understand the factors underlying scientific success and research methodologies.

The social implications of the paper include promoting national pride and cultural identity, raising awareness of the importance of education and scientific research in driving social progress, inspiring future generations of scientists and researchers, reducing socioeconomic disparities and emphasizing the role of society, politics and culture in shaping scientific researchers' personalities and interests.

The paper's originality/value lies in its comprehensive documentation of the scientific biographies of Egypt's most prominent scientists in the 20th century, providing unique insights into the factors that contributed to their development and their impact across various academic disciplines. It preserves Egypt's scientific heritage and inspires future generations of scientists and researchers through the promotion of educational investments and scientific research. The encyclopedia serves as a useful tool for education professionals seeking to understand scientific success factors and research methodologies, emphasizing the importance of supportive and inclusive environments for scientific development.

The purpose of this paper is to know which growth-impeding constraints are perceived to act upon operations of small- to medium-sized (SME) companies by their owner-managers and to recommend transitionary paths to elevate constraints and increase contribution levels made by SMEs’ operations. To do so, this research has been primarily founded upon Hayes et al.’s (2005) operations contribution model for differentiating between different levels of operations’ contribution, and secondarily on the theory of constraints philosophy to explain the perceptions of constraints found at each level – current and future.

An open-ended survey and a series of group workshops have gathered new empirical data about these perceptions, which were coded using the relational content analysis to identify a parsimonious set of perceptual growth-impeding constraint categories. The most popular transitions were identified and a correlation of frequency rank orders between “perceived current” and “perceived future” constraints categories was calculated, and likely transitionary paths for growth are discussed. Three SME case studies were documented in related action research to contextualise survey findings.

The most popular transition was from “neutral” to “leading”. A lack of people capability was perceived to be the most commonly reported growth-impeding constraint category, followed by a combined lack of process competence and product and service innovation, further followed by a lack of skills in information technology automation. In addition, a new conceptual model has been generated inductively to address shortcomings found in the original operations contribution model (Hayes et al., 2005) during its application to UK SMEs. The new model is referred to in this paper as the “Operations Growth Rocket”.

This research only used data from UK SMEs.

This work should help SME owner-managers to overcome growth-impeding constraints that act upon their operations and assist them to develop more effective actions and paths to increase the contribution levels made by their operations. This in turn should support growth of their organisations. Findings will also inform teaching about more effective operations management in SMEs.

This work should help UK SMEs to grow, which in turn will strengthen the UK economy.

A novel approach and new data from 208 SMEs modify a classical operations contribution model (Hayes et al., 2005). This is achieved by considering transitionary paths to be meta-categories continua abstracted from constraint categories combined with case data for moving towards higher levels of operations contribution, rather than using discrete growth-impeding and growth-constraining “levels”. This research has inductively generated a new version of the classical contribution model that should be more suitable for stimulating growth in (UK) SMEs.

The purpose of this article was to provide an outline of the citation practices of “Evolving to a new dominant logic for marketing” by Vargo and Lusch (2004) to identify and discuss the most prominent research topics in which citations were used and to suggest future research based on the results of the analysis.

The authors used a comprehensive framework of citation practices based on iterations of previous literature to analyze the relevant literature, which they identified by accessing, systematically and rigorously, every available contribution matching a set of criteria. The authors then categorized these contributions and highlighted the main topics of research interest in each category.

The findings identify some of the factors in the continuous development of SDL, the way this new marketing logic permeated the scientific debate, the infusion of Vargo and Lusch (2004) into several contributions framed in the new logic or justified through it, and a general perception of a default reference. Additionally, the findings highlight the main topics of research interest in each category.

The analysis enabled the detection of the original paper's influence through advances in service studies, pollination into other fields of research and continuous scientific debate. The authors have highlighted several avenues for research and proposed future research directions.

This research analyzed the effects of the spread of the SDL cornerstone article and emphasized the advantage of using an in-depth approach to the analysis of studies through a framework applied to more than 4,600 studies.

This article aims to contribute to the critical accounting literature by reviewing how previous studies have addressed the topic of dialogic accounting (DA), examining the main themes investigated and discussing potential further developments of the DA research agenda.

The present study builds on a systematic literature review of 186 research products indexed on Scopus, Web of Science and Google Scholar that were published between 2004 and 2019 in 55 accounting or non-accounting scientific journals and 14 books.

First, a content analysis of each contribution informs a classification in terms of research design, methodology, geographical setting and sector of analysis. Second, a bibliometric analysis provides several visual representations of the network of research products included in our review using bibliographic coupling, cooccurrence and coauthorship analyses. Third, and most importantly, the main narrative review discusses the development of the research strand on DA from the seminal works that introduced the topic, through the core of critical contributions inspired by the struggle between democracy and agonism, to the most recent contributions, in which new topics emerge and innovative methodologies are applied to the study of DA.

The main contribution of this manuscript is twofold. In addition to providing a systematic, bibliometric and narrative review of the evolution of nearly two decades of literature on DA, the present study is intended to collect ideas for further research and to discuss how the advent of new technologies and the peculiarities of various institutional contexts can shape the future research agenda on this critical form of accounting.

This paper examines whether guests contribute sWOM (social word of mouth) on different SNSs (social networking sites) regarding various personal motivations. SNSs have changed the way guests eat and experience their food and dishes. Marketing managers have effectively targeted SNSs as a marketing tool, yet have little research about drivers of guests' sWOM contribution on SNSs has been done. A model including the significant motives: (1) experiences, (2) opinion leadership, (3) reflection of self and (4) need for unique is tested to investigate their positive effects on contribution behavior of social media guests.

The data collected from 411 guests by using the snowball method was used for analysis. The structural equation modeling was applied to examine the relationships among the constructs and test the eight proposed hypotheses.

Results reveal that experiences, opinion leadership, reflection of self and need for unique were positively associated with contributing sWOM of restaurants. Furthermore, those who have positive experiences tend to be opinion leadership and reflection of self. And guests who show reflection of self, they are more likely to have opinion leaders and show need for uniqueness. Our study expands the existing frameworks of sWOM contribution by identifying various motivations and labeling sWOM. Findings provide restaurant managers with managerial implications for online marketing strategies on SNSs to attract sWOM contribution among guests.

It has some limitations while discovering the motivations of positive sWOM contribution. First, we only focused on the motivation of contributing positive sWOM, while negative sWOM received many arguments in changing attitudes toward buying products or services. Second, we collected data in Vietnam only without comparing with different countries. Future research could explore further cross-cultural perspectives to fill the gap. Third, this study explored sWOM contribution in service environment, sWOM contribution from service context may be slightly different from those of product brands.

These findings highlight the motivations of sWOM contribution that restaurant managers must recognize and make use of it. SNSs have given power to consumers to post everything at anytime and anywhere they like, therefore restaurant managers need to deeply understand why their consumers contribute sWOM. In digital era, customers and guests have become the ultimate tools for promoting product or service brands. The marketing managers should create an online platform in order to facilitate their consumers to discuss their brand frequently (Charu et al., 2018). Restaurants should have policies to push positive eWOM maximally and also reduce advertising costs.

This is one of the first studies on sWOM contribution of what motivate guests to contribute their sWOM on SNSs. Theoretically, this study offers deep insights into the links between various motivations and sWOM in foodservice context. Managerially, understanding these motivations allow marketing managers create effective policies that motivate guests to contribute positive word of mouth.

This paper aims to retrospectively quantify the contribution of renewable energy consumption (REC) to mitigate the carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions for the belt and road initiative (BRI) region. The reason is that, so far, still few scientists have deeply analyzed this underlying impact, especially from the income levels’ perspective.

The study divides the BRI region into four groups by the income levels (high, HI; upper middle, UM; lower middle, LM; lower, LO) during 1992–2014 and uses the logarithmic mean Divisia index.

The results show the REC of the BRI has an overall decreasing trend but the driving contribution to the CO₂ growth except that the HI group’s REC has an obviously mitigating contribution of −2.09%. The number indicates that it is necessary and urgent to exploit and use renewable energy, especially in mid- and low-income countries due to the large potential of carbon mitigation. Besides, during 2010–2014, the energy intensity effects of different groups were negative except for the low income group (positive, 5.47 million tonnes), which showed that some poor countries recently reduced CO₂ emissions only by extensively using renewable energy but not enhancing the corresponding efficiency. Conversely, in other rich countries, people paid more attention to improve the energy-use efficiency to lower energy intensity.

This study creatively analyzes this underlying impact of the REC to mitigate the CO₂ emissions from the income levels’ perspective and proposes some reasonable countermeasures of reducing CO₂ for the BRI region.

This article aims to provide the current state of the art of the literature on the contribution of information and communication technologies (ICTs) on the measurement and management of performance in the healthcare sector. In particular, the work aims to identify current and emerging ICTs and how these relate to the performance measurement and management (PMM) cycle of healthcare organizations.

To address the research objective, we adopted a systematic literature review. In particular, we used the preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analysis (PRISMA) methodology to select articles related to the investigated topic. Based on an initial screening of 560 items retrieved from Scopus and ISI Web of Knowledge, we identified and analyzed 58 articles dealing with ICTs and PMM in the healthcare sector. The last update of the dataset refers to February 2024.

Although we attempted to address a relevant topic for both research and practice, we noticed that a relatively small sample of articles directly addressed it. Through this literature review, in addition to providing descriptive statistics of research on ICTs and PMM in healthcare, we identified six theoretical clusters of scientific streams focusing on the topic and eleven categories of ICTs effectively tackled by the literature. We then provided a holistic framework to link technologies to the different PMM phases and functions.

Nowadays, the availability of ICTs to support healthcare organizations’ processes and services is extensive. In this context, managers at various organizational levels need to understand and evaluate how each ICT can support different activities to benefit most from their adoption. The findings of this study can offer valuable insights to top and line managers of healthcare organizations for planning their investments in both existing and emerging ICTs to support the various stages of development and functions of PMM.

Most of the current literature focusing on ICTs in the healthcare sector refers to the contribution that technology provides to clinical processes and services, devoting limited attention to the impact of ICTs on administrative processes, such as PMM. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this represents the first literature review on the contribution of ICTs to PMM in the healthcare sector. The review, differently from other research focused on specific ICTs and/or specific PMM functions, provides a holistic perspective to understand how these technologies may support healthcare organizations and systems in measuring and managing their performance.