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Web sites are typically designed attending to a variety of criteria. However, web site structure determines browsing behavior and way‐finding results. The aim of this study is to identify the main profiles of web sites' organizational structure by modeling them as graphs and considering several social network analysis features.

A case study based on 80 institutional Spanish universities' web sites has been used for this purpose. For each root domain, two different networks have been considered: the first is the domain network, and the second is the page network. In both cases, several indicators related to social network analysis have been evaluated to characterize the web site structure. Factor analysis provides the statistical methodology to adequately extract the main web site profiles in terms of their internal structure.

This paper allows the categorization of web site design styles and provides general guidelines to assist designers to better identify areas for creating and improving institutional web sites. The findings of this study offer practical implications to web site designers for creating and maintaining an effective web presence, and for improving usability.

The research is limited to 80 institutional Spanish universities' web sites. Other institutional university web sites from different countries can be analyzed, and the conclusions could be compared or enlarged.

This paper highlights the importance of the internal web sites structure, and their implications on usability and way‐finding results. As a difference to previous research, the paper is focused on the comparison of internal structure of institutional web sites, rather than analyzing the web as a whole or the interrelations among web sites.

A large variety of online communities have emerged during the last years as a result of the challenges faced by both the business and scientific worlds. This trend has also been promoted by the development of internet and new Web 2.0 technologies. In this context, this paper is focused on the determinants of success of online communities. But, as a difference from other studies, these determinants are analyzed from the social network analysis perspective. Several constructs related to the community organization as a social network are proposed and their interrelations are hypothesized in a general research framework. The obtained results test the proposed model providing the most relevant antecedents of the project success.

A case study based on Linux ports to non‐conventional processor and environments is used to test the proposed model. Structural equation modeling analysis is used to validate the structural proposed model.

The main antecedents of online communities' success, quantifying the strength of the relation through the standardized path coefficients.

The research is limited to a particular set of online communities engaged with the development of the non‐conventional Linux ports. However, they constitute a representative set of communities in the field of the open source projects (OSS) development, which are typically developed using a community of support.

This paper fulfils the main antecedents causing the successful development of Internet virtual communities. Instead of using sources of data coming from users' surveys, this study employs community interactions as a source of data. Results have important implications over the development of online communities, like software business models based on virtual communities and open source software.

This paper aims to explore the image of travel destinations after the visit by analysing sentiment orientation of the online reviews, and how this orientation, as well as other electronic word of mouth (eWOM)’s credibility sources, can affect the perceived helpfulness of shared opinions measured through the helpfulness score.

Tourist destinations are increasingly affected by travel-related information shared through the Web. More and more people first check the previous travel experiences of other people to build their own destination image and to help them in their choice of destination. This paper analyses the shared opinions related to the city of Barcelona in a well-known eWOM website. The reviewers’ opinion and the credibility sources of eWOM are extracted from the web using a webscraper, while the sentiment score to analyse the discourse orientation (positive vs negative) is calculated using computer-based sentiment analysis techniques.

Online reviews’ users are reluctant to provide extreme polar opinions (very negative, very positive) to any travel subcategory (hotel, restaurant, attractions and night-life) of a tourist destination. The results obtained also reveal that eWOM’s perceived helpfulness grows with the expertise of the reviewer. However, the helpfulness score given to the reviews posted is not influenced by the sentiment orientation of the author’s opinion.

This research is limited to the case study of Ciao, which is a well-known consumer platform, and the city of Barcelona, which is a top touristic destination. However, the approach proposed can be easily extended to other similar consumer platforms and cities using the same methodology.

Understanding the information posted in the media environment is a major concern in the field of marketing destination planning. Positive and negative eWOM offers potential consumers a clear picture on the tourist destination, and this information can be used by Destination Marketing Organisations to meet customers’ needs and expectations. The perceived helpfulness of reviews analysed in this paper can also help practitioners and scholars to understand those factors that make reviews more trustable.

From a methodological point of view, the main contribution of this research is the utilisation of an unstructured approach to the measurement of the destination image based on the sentiment analysis of shared opinions. From a theoretical point of view, the study relates the post-visit destination image with the pre-visit image formation process, using the sentiment orientation of the former and the perceived helpfulness of the latter.

During recent decades, research institutions have increased collaboration with other institutions since it is recognized as a good practice that improves their performance. However, they do not usually consider external collaborations as a strategic issue despite their benefits. The purpose of this paper consists of identifying different patterns of collaboration and internationalization of universities, with the aim of helping managers and policy makers to take decisions related to their national research policies.

Co‐authorship analysis has been used in conjunction with social network analysis to model inter‐institutional collaborations as networks, extracting these collaborations from the Web of Science database. Using several structural properties of the extracted networks and applying a statistical treatment, the main profiles of collaborations and internationalization have been obtained.

Obtained results distinguish three patterns of collaborations according to the intensity and scope of collaborations. The statistical treatment also provides a segmentation of universities according to their collaboration profiles. Finally, universities are represented in bi‐dimensional maps using external collaborations as a measure of similarity.

Although this study is restricted to English universities, it could probably be extended at least to other countries in the European Union or even other developed countries.

Research and institutions productivity are usually linked to the amount of received funding. The use of indicators related to internationalization of institutions can help to avoid a bias in favour of research quantity rather than quality, and towards a short‐term performance rather than a long‐term research capacity.

As a difference to previous works, this paper analyses networks of collaboration from the viewpoint of institutions. More specifically, the combination of social network analysis and factor analysis is used to identify patterns of collaboration among institutions. A longitudinal study is also included to demonstrate that the obtained categorization of universities is maintained over time.

Intelligent transportation systems (ITS) are defined as new infrastructures that combine people, roads and vehicles over the basis of modern embedded systems with enhanced digital connectivity. ITS is fast becoming a reality, favored in their development by the use of the internet. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the feasibility of road‐traffic management systems, using the internet as the communication link.

A literature review is presented to give a background in the progressive role that ITS and road safety and control applications play in society. The combination of internet and the ITS architecture is covered, and an electronic prototype providing web services for road‐traffic management is designed as an example. The scope of road traffic security research is extensive, and the use of artificial vision systems in road‐traffic analysis (technology which is on the basis of the developed prototype) is also discussed. The hardware and software characteristics of the prototype are defined.

The paper provides new insights into the use of the internet for road‐traffic management applications.

The research is limited to one particular road‐traffic management system. Results could be extended if more real equipments were analyzed. Also, end‐users' perception and their acceptance of the new technology could be examined using an information system theory like the technology acceptance model.

The paper shows the utility of the internet in the development of novel ITS.

Globalisation is generally defined as the “denationalisation of clusters of political, economic, and social activities” that destabilize the ability of the sovereign State to control activities on its territory, due to the rising need to find solutions for universal problems, like the pollution of the environment, on an international level. Globalisation is a complex, forceful legal and social process that take place within an integrated whole with out regard to geographical boundaries. Globalisation thus differs from international activities, which arise between and among States, and it differs from multinational activities that occur in more than one nation‐State. This does not mean that countries are not involved in the sociolegal dynamics that those transboundary process trigger. In a sense, the movements triggered by global processes promote greater economic interdependence among countries. Globalisation can be traced back to the depression preceding World War II and globalisation at that time included spreading of the capitalist economic system as a means of getting access to extended markets. The first step was to create sufficient export surplus to maintain full employment in the capitalist world and secondly establishing a globalized economy where the planet would be united in peace and wealth. The idea of interdependence among quite separate and distinct countries is a very important part of talks on globalisation and a significant side of today’s global political economy.

In the traffic monitoring system, the detection of stirring vehicles is monitored by fitting static cameras in the traffic scenarios. Background subtraction a commonly used method detaches poignant objects in the foreground from the background. The method applies a Gaussian Mixture Model, which can effortlessly be contaminated through slow-moving or momentarily stopped vehicles.

This paper proposes the Enhanced Gaussian Mixture Model to overcome the addressed issue, efficiently detecting vehicles in complex traffic scenarios.

The model was evaluated with experiments conducted using real-world on-road travel videos. The evidence intimates that the proposed model excels with other approaches showing the accuracy of 0.9759 when compared with the existing Gaussian mixture model (GMM) model and avoids contamination of slow-moving or momentarily stopped vehicles.

The proposed method effectively combines, tracks and classifies the traffic vehicles, resolving the contamination problem that occurred by slow-moving or momentarily stopped vehicles.