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This paper examines the socio-political affordances of metrics in research evaluation and the consequences of epistemic injustice in research practices and recorded knowledge.

First, the use of metrics is examined as a mechanism that promotes competition and social acceleration. Second, it is argued that the use of metrics in a competitive research culture reproduces systemic inequalities and leads to epistemic injustice. The conceptual analysis draws on works of Hartmut Rosa and Miranda Fricker, amongst others.

The use of metrics is largely driven by competition such as university rankings and league tables. Not only that metrics are not designed to enrich academic and research culture, they also suppress the visibility and credibility of works by minorities. As such, metrics perpetuate epistemic injustice in knowledge practices; at the same time, the reliability of metrics for bibliometric and scientometric studies is put into question.

As metrics leverage who can speak and who will be heard, epistemic injustice is reflected in recorded knowledge and what we consider to be information.

This paper contributes to the discussion of metrics beyond bibliometric studies and research evaluation. It argues that metrics-induced competition is antithetical to equality and diversity in research practices.

The purpose of this paper is to review and discuss Luciano Floridi’s 2019 book The Logic of Information: A Theory of Philosophy as Conceptual Design, the latest instalment in his philosophy of information (PI) tetralogy, particularly with respect to its implications for library and information studies (LIS).

Nine scholars with research interests in philosophy and LIS read and responded to the book, raising critical and heuristic questions in the spirit of scholarly dialogue. Floridi responded to these questions.

Floridi’s PI, including this latest publication, is of interest to LIS scholars, and much insight can be gained by exploring this connection. It seems also that LIS has the potential to contribute to PI’s further development in some respects.

Floridi’s PI work is technical philosophy for which many LIS scholars do not have the training or patience to engage with, yet doing so is rewarding. This suggests a role for translational work between philosophy and LIS.

The book symposium format, not yet seen in LIS, provides forum for sustained, multifaceted and generative dialogue around ideas.

This paper aims to understand the nature of citations and metrics in the larger system of knowledge production involving universities, funding agencies, publishers, and indexing and data analytic services.

First, the normative and social constructivist views of citations are reviewed to be understood as co-existing conditions. Second, metrics are examined through the processes of commensuration by tracing the meanings of metrics embedded in various kinds of documents and contexts. Third, the steering effects of citations and metrics on knowledge production are discussed. Finally, the conclusion addresses questions pertaining to the validity and legitimacy of citations as data and their implications for knowledge production and the conception of information.

The normative view of citations is understood as an ideal speech situation; the social constructivist view of citation is recognised in the system of knowledge production where citing motivations are influenced by epistemic, social and political factors. When organisational performances are prioritised and generate system imperatives, motives of competition become dominant in shaping citing behaviour, which can deviate from the norms and values in the academic lifeworld. As a result, citations and metrics become a non-linguistic steering medium rather than evidence of research quality and impact.

This paper contributes to the understanding of the nature of citations and metrics and their implications for the conception of information and knowledge production.

The purpose of this paper is to present a new method, namely, “Re-modified quintic B-spline collocation method” to solve the Kuramoto–Sivashinsky (KS) type equations. In this method, re-modified quintic B-spline functions and the Crank–Nicolson formulation is used for space and time integration, respectively. Five examples are considered to test out the efficiency and accuracy of the method. The main objective is to develop a method which gives more accurate results and reduces the computational cost so that the authors require less memory storage.

A new collocation technique is developed to solve the KS type equations. In this technique, quintic B-spline basis functions are re-modified and used to integrate the space derivatives while time derivative is discretized by using Crank–Nicolson formulation. The discretization yields systems of linear equations, which are solved by using Gauss elimination method with partial pivoting.

Five examples are considered to test out the efficiency and accuracy of the method. Finally, the present study summarizes the following outcomes: first, the computational cost of the proposed method is the less than quintic B-spline collocation method. Second, the present method produces better results than those obtained by Lattice Boltzmann method (Lai and Ma, 2009), quintic B-spline collocation method (Mittal and Arora, 2010), quintic B-spline differential quadrature method (DQM) (Mittal and Dahiya, 2017), extended modified cubic B-spline DQM (Tamsir et al., 2016) and modified cubic B-splines collocation method (Mittal and Jain, 2012).

The method presented in this paper is new to best of the authors’ knowledge. This work is the original work of authors and the manuscript is not submitted anywhere else for publication.

This paper aims to propose a numerical definition-based systematic design approach (NDSDA) to generate an explicit numerical definition of the product form profile and to establish the correlation between the product form features and the corresponding consumers’ image perceptions.

To illustrate the feasibility of the proposed method, this study considers the design of a two-dimensional automobile profile for illustration purposes and commences by developing a detailed numerical definition of an automobile profile using Bézier curves. A series of automobile image evaluations are conducted to examine the relationship between the characteristics of an automobile profile and its associated consumer image perception. Finally, the evaluation results are analyzed statistically, and the statistical results are used to construct mathematical models formalizing the correlations between the automobile profile design variables and the consumers’ perceptions of the product image.

The results of the evaluation trials are used to construct mathematical models capable of predicting the likely consumer response to any automobile profile designed in accordance with the numerical definition. Furthermore, the evaluation data enable the critical design variables and form features to be determined such that the efficacy of the design process in creating automobiles which better meet the consumers’ image aspirations can be improved.

The major contribution of the NDSDA methodology presented in this study is the ability it gives to designers to specify the product form in a detailed yet highly efficient manner. Furthermore, the numerical definition of the product form not only provides a suitable basis for identifying the critical design variables and form features of the product but also provides an understanding of how these variables should be manipulated to obtain or reinforce the desired product image.

Based on the theory of habitual domain, the purpose of this paper is to explore inter‐firm networks' mechanisms for coping with environmental change and for assisting firms to adapt to their collaborative networks. Business globalization is driving more and more individual firms to form inter‐firm collaborative networks. These networks need to develop new types of strategic capability in order not only to adopt a robust business process that will achieve high efficiency, but also to develop a network system for responding to external environmental changes.

With insights gained from the case study, the paper develops an analytical framework for deconstructing the network behavioral changes based on the network habitual domain concept and discusses the dual roles of the network‐based habitual domain in network behavioral changes.

This paper demonstrates how a Chinese telecommunications service company and its inter‐firm network became the market leader in one of the provincial capital cities in China within six years.

From an endogenous perspective, this paper contributes some useful concepts that may assist both academia and managers to identify network‐based habitual domains, improve the domains continuously, enhance their response capabilities, and formulate appropriate strategies according to the competition's requirements.

Change agents are individuals who can successfully transform aspects of how organisations operate. In education, teachers as change agents are increasingly seen as vital to the successful operation of schools and self-improving school systems. To date, however, there has been no systematic investigation of the nature and role of teacher change agents. To address this knowledge gap, we undertook a systematic review into five key areas regarding teachers as change agents. After reviewing 70 outputs we found that current literature predominantly positions teacher change agents as the deliverers of top-down change, with the possibility of bottom-up educational reform currently neglected.

This paper aims to review comprehensively the different voltage-boosting techniques and classifies according to their voltage gain, stress on the semiconductor devices, count of the total components and their prominent features. Hence, the focus is on non-isolated step-up converters. The converters categorized are analyzed according to their category with graphical representation.

Many converters have been reported in recent years in the literature to meet our power requirements from mill watts to megawatts. Fast growth in the generation of renewable energy in the past few years has promoted the selection of suitable converters that directly impact the behaviour of renewable energy systems. Step-up converters are a fast-emerging switching power converter in various power supply units. Researchers are more attracted to the derivation of novel topology with a high voltage gain, low voltage and current stress, high efficiency, low cost, etc.

A comparative study is done on critical metrics such as voltage gain, switch voltage stress and component count. Besides, the converters are also summarized based on their advantages and disadvantages. Furthermore, the areas that need to be explored in this field are identified and presented.

Types of analysis usually performed in dc converter and their needs with the areas need to be focused are not yet completely reviewed in most of the articles. This paper gives an eyesight on these topics. This paper will guide the researchers to derive and suggest a suitable topology for the chosen application. Moreover, it can be used as a handbook for studying the various topologies with their shortfalls, which will provide a way for researchers to focus.

The purpose of this paper is to categorize industrial clusters, and then compare three industrial clusters of three countries from the perspectives of hard environment, soft environment, factors from supply and demand sides, and the network mechanism.

Data were collected through interview with cluster coordinators. Qualitative case studies were conducted.

The center of excellence behaves well in nearly all aspects, while the spatially narrowly distributed specific center of innovation mainly exploits benefits from its concentrated sector. For the Chinese comprehensive technology incubator, relatively limited geographical space and broad sectorial distribution endow it with unclear strengths, implying the inadequacy of interconnectedness and industry relatedness mentioned by Porter.

Data were collected mainly from cluster coordinators, implying further data collecting and more comprehensive analysis.

It only makes sense to compare industrial clusters that are comparable with each other. Elements must be matched to facilitate the network interactions, and hence the innovation performance of clusters.

This paper contributes to the theoretical basis through it analyzing and clarifying the scales to measure industrial clusters, and answers the question: what is the situation of industrial clusters behaving in several aspects including hard environment, soft environment, supply, demand, network interactions and innovation performance?

The screw extruder is applied in cement-three-dimensional (3D) printing. The cement paste flow in 3D printing is the typical Herschel–Bulkley fluid. To understand the flow in the channel, the improved lattice Boltzmann method (LBM) is proposed.

For Herschel–Bulkley flow, an improved LBM is presented to avoid the poor stability and accuracy. The non-Newtonian effect is regard as a special forcing term. The Poiseuille flow is taken to discuss the detailed process of the method. With the method, the analytical solution and numerical solution are obtained and compared. Then, the effect of the initial yield stress on the numerical solution is both explored by the shear-thickening fluid and the shear-thinning fluid. Moreover, the variations of the relative errors under different lattice nodes and different power-law indexes are analyzed. Finally, the method is applied into the simulation of the flow in the extruder of cement-3D printing.

The results show that the improved method is effective for Herschel–Bulkley fluids, which can simulate the flow in the extruder stably and accurately.

The simulation can contribute to understand the cement paste flow in the screw extruder, which helps to optimize the structure of the extruder in the following periods.

The improve method provide a new way to analyze the flow in the extruder of cement-3D printing. Also, in the past research, LBM for Herschel–Bulkley fluid is ignored, whereas the study can provide the reference for the numerical simulation.