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The purpose of this article is to discuss approaches to sustainable decision-making for integrating emerging educational technologies in library instruction while supporting evidence-based practice (EBP).

This article highlights recent trends in emerging educational technologies and EBP and details a model for supporting evidence informed decision-making. This viewpoint article draws on an analysis of recent literature, as well as experience from professional practice.

Authors discuss the need for sustainable decision-making that addresses a perceived lack of evidence surrounding emerging technologies, a dilemma that many library educators and practitioner-researchers will have faced in their own library instruction. To support the evidence-informed selection and integration of emerging educational technologies, a two-pronged model is presented, beginning with an articulation of pedagogical aims, alignment of technological affordances to these aims and support of this alignment via hard evidence available in the research literature, as well as soft evidence found in the environmental scan.

This article provides an outline and synthesis of key issues of relevance to library practitioners working within a challenging and ever-changing landscape of technologies available for learning and instruction. The proposed approach aims to create a sustainable model for addressing problems of evidence and will benefit academic librarians considering emerging educational technologies in their own pedagogy, as well as those who support the pedagogy of others.

Strategic decision-making is a complex process and encompasses an exhaustive knowledge base, collective guidance, contemporary foresight, analytical capabilities, paradigmatic congruence, and risk assessment and optimization within mission space. Employing advanced sciences convergence and analytical methodologies, the aim of this report is to provide a set of plausible solution trajectories to complex scenarios.

Three methodologies are reported here which provide policymakers with plausible solution pathways and alternatives. The methodologies, namely: TechFARM, ADAMS, and NESTTS, involve convergence of scientific disciplines, cutting edge technologies, social dynamics, astute extraction, and principles of foresight to support the process of informed decision-making, as comprehensive tools to develop a plausible solution space and future trends.

The methodologies provided in this report provide scientific basis to trends analysis and foresight. Few selected examples are reported here indicating its practical implications. The methodologies are currently applied to and likely to be used for many applications in trends analysis for government, industry, and even academics. These applications are particularly relevant to policy-making due to their capacity for identification of emerging trends.

Being highly adaptable, these methodologies were initially generated for defense applications, but have since been applied to clean water, cyber-security, the medical sector, and environmental health and safety (EHS) and evaluating eco-toxicity of nanomaterials, to strategically address a variety of global challenges. Additionally, these methodologies support investment recommendations and implementation of policies that promise significant benefit to the public at large.

With various challenges in the digital era, stakeholders are expressing growing interests in understanding the impact of emerging and disruptive technologies on freight transportation. This paper provides a systematic literature review of the current state of affairs as well as future trends and aims to support stakeholders' decision-making in logistics management in the era of disruptive technologies.

Several recent and representative articles from academic, industrial and governmental perspectives were investigated to set the scene for this research and to serve as a baseline for electing nine emerging technologies, which were then used to conduct a systematic literature review covering the literature within the area during the past twelve years.

3D printing, artificial intelligence, automated robots, autonomous vehicles, big data analytics, blockchain, drones, electric vehicles and the Internet of Things were identified as the emerging technologies. The current state of existing research and potential future opportunities were analyzed.

Since the potential literature body is almost impossible to fully cover, a tradeoff between the number of emerging technologies and the related literature reviewed has been performed. However, the paper provides a novel approach to select the emerging and disruptive technologies and a systematic literature review to fill the identified research gap in the related literature.

The research support various stakeholders to better capture the current status of and the future opportunities in freight transportation and gain a clearer understanding of the disruptive technologies as well as to guide them in how to deploy these initiatives in future decision-making.

By providing a systematic literature review on the trends, themes and research opportunities in the era of disruptive technologies, the papers bring about broad and comprehensive review on the impact of disruptive technologies on logistics and transportation as well as opportunities to support management decision support in the logistics industry.

Due to globalization, digitization and advanced technology, academic libraries are experiencing a tremendous change in their role and operations. The purpose of this study is to critically examine and establish the emerging trends of academic libraries in Kenya; this study also highlights some of the critical roles of the academic libraries in relation to the emerging trends.

This study adopted the literature review method to critically analyse and establish the various roles and emerging trends and issues in academic libraries in Kenya.

This study established that change is inevitable and that academic libraries are supposed to adapt to the emerging trending trends and roles, lest their function and service become redundant. Due to the fact that library users’ information needs and information-seeking behaviour are changing, academic libraries are supposed to devise new and innovative ways of reaching out to their clients.

This study has been able to comprehensively create a new viewpoint of the role and emerging trends of academic libraries in Kenya in regards to the changing and advancement of new technology.

The evolution from emerging technologies to smart libraries is thoroughly analyzed thematically and bibliometrically in this research study, spanning 2013 through 2022. Finding and analyzing the significant changes, patterns and trends in the subject as they are represented in academic papers is the goal of this research.

Using bibliometric methodologies, this study gathered and examined a large corpus of research papers, conference papers and related material from several academic databases.

Starting with Artificial Intelligence (AI), the Internet of Things (IoT), Big Data (BD), Augmentation Reality/Virtual Reality and Blockchain Technology (BT), the study discusses the advent of new technologies and their effects on libraries. Using bibliometric analysis, this study looks at the evolution of publications over time, the geographic distribution of research and the most active institutions and writers in the area. A thematic analysis is also carried out to pinpoint the critical areas of study and trends in emerging technologies and smart libraries. Some emerging themes are information retrieval, personalized recommendations, intelligent data analytics, connected library spaces, real-time information access, augmented reality/virtual reality applications in libraries and strategies, digital literacy and inclusivity.

This study offers a thorough overview of the research environment by combining bibliometric and thematic analysis, illustrating the development of theories and concepts during the last ten years. The results of this study helps in understanding the trends and future research directions in emerging technologies and smart libraries. This study is an excellent source of information for academics, practitioners and policymakers involved in developing and applying cutting-edge technology in library environments.

The purpose of this paper is to propose and discuss a new regional foresight methodology.

The first part describes the methodology and the organizational process adopted for implementing foresight at the regional level and highlights the criticalities. The research methodology is based on a case study. The case is the analysis of the industrial and regional sectors and the technological families in the Lombardy region.

This methodology analyses trends, technologies and industries, returning a set of qualitative and quantitative indicators. Then, it aggregates them, building two matrixes (trends/technologies and technologies/industries). Finally, it evaluates the future importance of a technology (the attractiveness of a technology for the long-term competitiveness of the regional main industrial sectors) and the capabilities of the regional industrial, technical and scientific system to develop specific technologies (feasibility for the regional system to develop the chosen technology).

The originality lies in an integrated analysis of the possible futures and their relation with the industrial world. Its value is as a tool to suggest policies and R&D investments. It is possible to provide a sound basis for science and technology policymaking.

How prospective or emerging technologies can be supported through government-funded research projects has gradually received global attention. However, previous studies have primarily focused on the effects of government funding on subsequent technological development, the overall economy or social welfare of a country or corporate research and development (R&D) activities. These studies have not examined the technology distribution and development trends of government-funded research from a comprehensive technology perspective. In addition, previous measurements of the influence of government-funded R&D projects faced the difficulty of transferring the research achievements of government-funded research to the commercial market.

Patents can provide a preliminary understanding of the collaboration, development focus and status of market technologies. Accordingly, the purpose of this study was to examine the development directions of patented technologies engendered from government-funded research projects. Analyzing the network of government-funded patented technologies helped identify the current status and location of specific technologies in a patent network as well as the hotspot technologies in government-funded research projects that correspond to the market.

The results of this study indicated that the technologies obtaining government-funded patents mainly consist of advanced materials and semiconductors and that the technological focus has shifted over the years. Nanotechnology, pharmaceutical technology and sanitary technology have gradually become the technologies receiving most of government-funded patents. The trend of development of these technologies also corresponds to the emerging technologies advocated by countries worldwide in recent years.

This study provided a comprehensive verification of the government-funded patented technologies from a macro perspective by identifying key technologies using technology network analysis. The findings of this study can serve as a reference for the allocation of governmental R&D resources and the promotion of novel technologies in the private sector.

In the last decade, cloud manufacturing (CMfg) has attracted considerable attention from academia and industry worldwide. It is widely accepted that the design and analysis of cloud manufacturing architecture (CMfg-A) are the basis for developing and applying CMfg systems. However, in existing studies, analysis of the status, development process and internal characteristics of CMfg-A is lacking, hindering an understanding of the research hotspots and development trends of CMfg-A. Meanwhile, effective guidance is lacking on the construction of superior CMfg-As. The purpose of this paper is to review the relevant research on CMfg-A via identification of the main layers, elements, relationships, structure and functions of CMfg-A to provide valuable information to scholars and practitioners for further research on key CMfg-A technologies and the construction of CMfg systems with superior performance.

This study systematically reviews the relevant research on CMfg-A across transformation process to internal characteristics by integrating quantitative and qualitative methods. First, the split and reorganization method is used to recognize the main layers of CMfg-A. Then, the transformation process of six main layers is analysed through retrospective analysis, and the similarities and differences in CMfg-A are obtained. Subsequently, based on systematic theory, the elements, relationships, structure and functions of CMfg-A are inductively studied. A 3D printing architecture design case is conducted to discuss the weakness of the previous architecture and demonstrate how to improve it. Finally, the primary current trends and future opportunities are presented.

By analyzing the transformation process of CMfg-A, this study finds that CMfg-A resources are developing from tangible resources into intangible resources and intelligent resources. CMfg-A technology is developing from traditional cloud computing-based technology towards advanced manufacturing technology, and CMfg-A application scope is gradually expanding from traditional manufacturing industry to emerging manufacturing industry. In addition, by analyzing the elements, relationships, structure and functions of CMfg-A, this study finds that CMfg-A is undergoing a new generation of transformation, with trends of integrated development, intelligent development, innovative development and green development. Case study shows that the analysis of the development trend and internal characteristics of the architecture facilitates the design of a more effective architecture.

This paper predominantly focuses on journal articles and some key conference papers published in English and Chinese. The reason for considering Chinese articles is that CMfg was proposed by the Chinese and a lot of Chinese CMfg-A articles have been published in recent years. CMfg is suitable for the development of China’s manufacturing industry because of China’s intelligent manufacturing environment. It is believed that this research has reached a reliable comprehensiveness that can help scholars and practitioners establish new research directions and evaluate their work in CMfg-A.

Prior studies ignore the identification and analysis of development process and internal characteristics for the current development of CMfg-A, including the main layers identification of different CMfg-As and the transformation process analysis of these main layers, and in-depth analysis of the inner essence of CMfg-A (such as its elements, relationships, structure and functions). This study addresses these limitations and provides a comprehensive literature review.

This chapter examines emerging trends in the use of advancing technologies in human resource development (HRD). The use of technology in the workplace to increase productivity and optimize business results is not a new concept; however, the use of technology to capture vital HRD data and create innovative organizational development strategies and programs is now the cornerstone of many HRD organizations. In dealing with the challenges of a global, multigenerational workforce, having to do more with less, and the constant demand to remain competitive, organizations seek innovative ways to integrate technology into its organizational development practices. The use of technology in human resource development has proven to save time, costs, and provide a more accurate assessment of the state of the workforce regarding skills, competencies, culture, and talent acquisition over previous methods. While advancing technologies in human resource development offer significant value and benefits, it also presents challenges and issues. For this reason, it is vital for organizations to gain a holistic understanding of the positive and negative implications that advancing technologies have on human resource development practices. This chapter explores four areas of focus in advancing technologies in HRD: (1) emerging trends; (2) value and benefits; (3) challenges and issues; and (4) opportunities for use.

Data mining along with its varied technologies like numerical mining, textual mining, multimedia mining, web mining, sentiment analysis and big data mining proves itself as an emerging field and manifests itself in the form of different techniques such as information mining; big data mining; big data mining and Internet of Things (IoT); and educational data mining. This paper aims to discuss how these technologies and techniques are used to derive information and, eventually, knowledge from data.

An extensive review of literature on data mining and its allied techniques was carried to ascertain the emerging procedures and techniques in the domain of data mining. Clarivate Analytic’s Web of Science and Sciverse Scopus were explored to discover the extent of literature published on Data Mining and its varied facets. Literature was searched against various keywords such as data mining; information mining; big data; big data and IoT; and educational data mining. Further, the works citing the literature on data mining were also explored to visualize a broad gamut of emerging techniques about this growing field.

The study validates that knowledge discovery in databases has rendered data mining as an emerging field; the data present in these databases paves the way for data mining techniques and analytics. This paper provides a unique view about the usage of data, and logical patterns derived from it, how new procedures, algorithms and mining techniques are being continuously upgraded for their multipurpose use for the betterment of human life and experiences.

The paper highlights different aspects of data mining, its different technological approaches, and how these emerging data technologies are used to derive logical insights from data and make data more meaningful.

The paper tries to highlight the current trends and facets of data mining.