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The purpose of this paper is to empirically assess the payoffs of a corporate portal in an academic institution in Oman and its impacts on business processes and employees.

The study included 100 employees, mostly instructors, in an academic institution. The questionnaire included indicators related to the portal usage, employees’ benefits (learning, adaptability and job satisfaction) and business processes’ benefits (effectiveness, efficiency and innovativeness) constructs. Data were analyzed by PLS‐Graph 3.0, a variance‐based structural equation modeling software.

Results revealed that corporate portal has significant returns on employees’ learning, adaptability and job satisfaction, and business processes’ effectiveness, efficiency and innovation. All six hypotheses in this study were supported.

The paper provides empirical evidence for practitioners and researchers on the benefits of a corporate portal in an academic institution in Oman.

Enterprise portal is a type of new information system that can help companies and their employees to manage, share, and use previously disparate information. There are more than 60 vendors that are offering corporate portal solutions. With so many vendors, selecting the right one can be a difficult task. The primary objective of this research is to identify and evaluate the functions and features in enterprise portal products. In particular, this study develops a simplified model that can be used for identifying and classifying the functions and features in corporate portal software. The results of this study may be useful to information technology managers, educators, and students involved in knowledge management, business intelligence, information systems resources management, and data management. System developers, software engineers, project managers, financial managers, and data architects can use the functions and features identified in this study as benchmarking tools for evaluating portals capabilities.

Horizontal web portals fill an important place in the operation of the internet and this paper seeks to look at how these portals may become profitable. A portal is simply a gateway, and a web portal can thus be seen as a gateway to content and services on the internet, or on a corporate intranet. This paper aims to compare several different views of what constitutes a portal, and to offer a specific definition. The main focus of the paper is on general horizontal (or public) portals and the relationship between their business‐revenue models and the content they provide. This paper aims to briefly review the relevant literature before describing a revenue model consisting of players, strategies and content. This is then examined and synthesised to match various revenue models and content.

After proposing the model, the paper tests how the matches proposed between revenue and content in the model compare with two currently operating popular horizontal portals.

An examination of two popular portals (one world‐wide and one based in Australia) has provided typical examples of how the advertising/revenue can be employed by horizontal portals and shown that they appear to match fairly closely with the proposed revenue/content model. After having examined the content of these two well‐known portals, it appears at this early stage that the revenue‐content model may show some promise.

While the paper cannot claim complete generalisability of a model based on a comparison of only two horizontal portals, the results are promising and should be useful for horizontal portal managers looking for how to balance the revenue of their portal with the content that they generate and the services they offer.

When fully tested, the model will provide horizontal portal operators assistance with the process of determining suitable content for their portals to match their chosen revenue strategies.

It is believed that this model is one of the few revenue/content matching models developed for horizontal portals.

Highlights how the World Wide Web paved the way for the information age. Defines the portal as a gateway to information and a one‐stop Web site that tries to satisfy most personal daily Web needs. Lists the core functions, applications and priorities of a portal. Categorizes portals into three major types: horizontal, vertical and corporate, based on specific application or area. Presents the Asian scenario of Internet growth and popping up of portals with a country wide portal list. Despite the constraints of infrastructure, Net access and low awareness, the Indian portal scenario resembles a gold rush with the phenomenon of “get‐online, get‐rich”. Lists the major Indian portals: rediff.com, indiainfo.com, expressindia.com, indiatimes.com, sify.com, ciol.com, etc. Identifies the factors for portal success as access route, strategic alliance, content route, alternative content route and examines general versus specialized portals, with examples. Concludes that the future is for niche portals that cater for sophisticated users, provide knowledge for competitiveness, and adopt new Internet technologies, connective issues and local content.

The aim of this paper is to discuss a theoretical framework for increased integration of a company's communication policy, corporate language policy and corporate information portal with a view to facilitating communication management.

The paper draws on selected theoretical contributions on corporate language policy with special emphasis on theoretical considerations on the type of language policies developed and implemented in companies and organisations and on corporate communication with special emphasis on van Riel's common starting points. The empirical basis of the paper is a triangulation of questionnaire data, content analysis data and interview data.

The paper argues that corporate communication has not sufficiently included the operational part of a company's corporate communication. The paper makes the case for a theoretical integration framework based on van Riel's common starting points (CSPs), and argues that corporate communication also needs to include the corporate language policy and the corporate information portal, defined as a modern information directory offering communicators concrete communication data for use in concrete text production situations.

The paper proposes a CSP‐based theoretical integration framework and makes the case for a Holy Trinity in corporate communications based on the communication policy, the corporate language policy and the corporate information portal.

To investigate the relationship between organizational characteristics and enterprise information portal (EIP) adoption, and the relationship between EIP implementation and e‐business performance.

This study uses questionnaire survey method to collect data for statistical analysis.

The result of analysis shows that: between organizations that have and those that have not adopted EIP, significant differences exist in the maturity and familiarity of information technologies, and firm size; the implementation of EIP in terms of application degree, implementation type, integration ability, and users of EIP, will significantly influence e‐business performance; the relationship between the application degree of EIP and e‐business performance will be enhanced by higher e‐business implementation; the relationship between the implementation type of EIP and e‐business performance will be intervened by higher e‐business implementation.

Corporations may create great business value by establishing EIP project.

This paper provides a model to understand the relationship between EIP implementation and e‐business performance and helps corporations evaluate EIP project.

The overall purpose of this study is to inform practitioners about the levers for improving their employee portals.

The authors introduce a theoretical model that is based on the DeLone and McLean IS success model, which considers the specific requirements of employee portals. They tested the associations between their model's success dimensions by using more than 4,400 employees' responses, which were collected in 12 companies across different industries. They applied structural equation modeling to carry out the causal analysis. In addition, within a performance‐based analysis, they further investigated the success dimensions' improvement potentials.

The results of the causal analysis indicate that besides the factors contributing to the success of information systems (IS) in general, other success dimensions – like the quality of the collaboration and process support – have to be considered when aiming for a successful employee portal. The performance‐based analysis emphasizes the significance of collaboration quality to improve an employee portal and indentifies the respective fields of action.

This paper's contribution to theory is the empirical validation of a model for investigating employee portal success. The performance‐based analysis further elaborates on the causal analysi's findings. The results advance theoretical development in the area of employee portals and serve as a basis for future research in this field.

This model offers a means for organizations to evaluate and predict the success of employee portals. The study's findings make it possible for practitioners to understand the levers with which to improve their employee portals and to prioritize their investments accordingly.

This study is among the first, which empirically validates a comprehensive success model for employee portals and highlights its practical usefulness by means of a performance‐based analysis.

The main purpose of this paper is to present the findings of a survey carried out in Southern African Development Community (SADC) universities to explore their knowledge portal practices and ignite debate on best practices regarding the importance, design and management of knowledge portals in developing world contexts.

The main data collection instrument was a questionnaire which was largely quantitative except one question was qualitative for additional comments.

The major finding of this study is that only one out of ten participating universities had a knowledge portal. Furthermore, what other participating universities have in place as web sites can only be described realistically as “extended web sites”.

Initially, the main purpose of this study was to explore SADC university knowledge portals and based on the findings ascertain the best practices prevailing among SADC universities. This purpose could not be fully achieved as most SADC participating universities do not have knowledge portals. Instead, they have extended web sites; hence, most responses are based on university extended web sites. Thus, the study reports on one case of a knowledge portal and describes how “extended web sites” might fit as foundational knowledge portals. Since the study was limited in its sample size (ten universities), it has implications for generalisation of the research findings.

This paper provides a theoretical framework for designing an effective university knowledge portal and creates the awareness of the importance of knowledge portals in universities. Also, the paper fills a gap in the literature on knowledge portals, and clarifies the difference between a knowledge portal and a web site.

To examine and discuss the features of library portals and suggest further development of these research tools.

The two categories of library portals (horizontal or public, and vertical) were examined to establish the characteristics of some of the portal software available in the marketplace. The study involved carrying out a literature search and visiting demonstration sites. Some library sites that have implemented this software were subsequently examined in order to establish features of their sites, and to see how these sites have handled the information literacy/research process.

Suggests that a well‐structured subject portal should be based on the principles of the flow of scientific information, and an information literacy component should be embedded in the portal. Such a portal could assist learners to become familiar with the breadth and depth of information resources relevant to their discipline. It should also assist librarians and learning advisers to become familiar with the information literacy requirements of specific subjects and courses. In this way, libraries should achieve their objective of making the learner information‐literate with minimal effort, and thus contribute positively to student learning outcomes.

The paper is a useful source of information for librarians considering investing in one of the commercial software tools and for those embarking on the development of subject portals. A pilot version of the subject portal implemented at the University of the Witswatersrand is shown.

The novelty in this work is the intuitive subject portal that is put forward; the elements and content of the portals are suggested.