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Observing trends and issues plays a key role in the success of any industry. Since 2010, the Association of College & Research Libraries (ACRL) has been publishing papers on top trends and issues in academic libraries in the USA, allowing for reflection, tracking, lesson drawing, adaptation, planning and direction. Such a publication is absent in the Jamaican library industry. This paper aims to examine the extent to which these trends and issues, as reported by ACRL, are evident in Jamaican academic librarianship.

Through document and thematic analysis of publications written on Jamaican academic librarianship 2010-2016, this paper highlights trends and issues in Jamaican academic librarianship.

There are similarities in the trends and issues in Jamaican academic librarianship and American academic librarianship; the similarities sometimes vary, however, in focus. Additionally, there are trends and issues in Jamaican academic librarianship not mentioned in the literature reviewed on American academic librarianship and vice versa.

A survey of the chief librarians’ perceptions regarding the trends and issues would be a useful follow-up.

This paper allows for reflection, comparison, benchmarking, lesson-drawing, planning and direction for academic libraries and other types of libraries in Jamaica and the rest of the developing world.

The gaps highlighted, particularly those with the most potential, can be discussed with the objective of exploring how these can be translated into new or revised services for the community of users.

This paper is of value, as there is no publication with an explicit focus on trends and issues in Jamaican academic libraries; this paper will be the first publication on trends and issues in Jamaican academic librarianship. In this regard, this paper makes an important contribution to the literature on academic librarianship generally, and to the literature on Caribbean and Jamaican academic librarianship, specifically.

Biennially, the Association of College & Research Libraries (ACRL), a division of the American Library Association, publishes a report on the top trends and issues affecting academic libraries in higher education. Harris (2016) used the trends and issues reported by the ACRL to inform a document and thematic analysis of publications written on Jamaican academic librarianship 2010-2016, to investigate the trends and issues in Jamaican academic librarianship. Harris’ (2016) paper however noted that a survey of the chief librarian in each library, regarding their perceptions of the trends and issues would be a useful follow-up to her study, and cited this as a limitation/implication of her paper. The purpose of this paper is to address the above limitation and is therefore the follow-up to Harris’ (2016) paper.

The chief librarians in five of the six local university libraries were surveyed to provide insights into the trends and issues in Jamaican academic libraries at the university level.

Acquisitions, budget, staffing, communicating value, digital preservation and curation, mobile environment, collaboration, scholarly communication, information technology, space, higher education, user behaviour and expectations and information literacy are the top trends and issues in Jamaican academic libraries at the university level.

This survey seeks to complement rather than contest Harris’ (2016) research. Perhaps a useful follow-up to both papers would be biennial updates. Additionally, a survey of the trends and issues in all types of academic libraries throughout the English-speaking Caribbean would be a useful follow-up.

This paper is of value, as it is the first survey of trends and issues in Jamaican academic librarianship. It enriches the existing document and thematic analytical research on trends and issues in Jamaican academic libraries by adding an empirical component. It also increases the number of publications, on trends and issues in Jamaican academic librarianship, from one to two, and allows voices from the English-speaking Caribbean (Jamaica) to be incorporated into the literature dedicated to trends and issues in academic libraries.

A particular feature that makes foresight powerful is its capability to learn from past trends to help guide decision‐making for future policy. However, in studying both past and future trends, network perspectives are often missing. Since networks are capable of revealing the structure that underpins relationships between stakeholders, key issues and actions in the past, they are powerful to help envisage the future. The purpose of this paper is to propose a methodological framework to incorporate network analysis in foresight.

The paper develops a generic framework to incorporate network analysis into foresight's five stages. Trends identified by respondents of the Big Picture Survey are used to demonstrate how we operationalize this framework.

A network perspective can enrich foresight analysis in that it helps reveal structural linkages between trends and thus can better identify emerging future issues, both of which are critical in foresight.

The inclusion of network analysis can shed light on the process of understanding complex data and assist in building a model based on links and relationships. Network analysis can reveal otherwise unobservable structural features of the data and can help boundary setting discussions in foresight.

Network concepts and measures could usefully enrich the interpretation of foresight data for further analysis, or plausible scenarios.

Network analysis offers a new way of looking at the foresight data by disentangling complicated issue webs. As shaping the future becomes more essential because of the complexity of science, technology and society interrelationships, the incorporation of network perspectives in foresight might be one of the ways to propel future studies.

The current paper aims to present the Scan‐4‐Light study, which was conducted for the systematic scanning and analysis of the Searchlight newsletters as a rapidly growing collection of articles on trends and topics in development and poverty.

Built upon the concept of the systemic foresight methodology, the Scan‐4‐Light approach involves the integrated use of horizon scanning, network analysis and evolutionary scenarios combined with expert consultations and workshops. The study identified the emerging trends, issues, weak signals and wild cards; created high‐value visualisations to emphasize the results and findings; and produced narratives to increase the impact and awareness of the development issues.

The Scan‐4‐Light project has resulted in a large number of specific outputs, providing the views of the Searchlight newsletters' contents at various levels of granularity. It has set out to show how the tools used here can be applied to illustrate the relationships among issues, and how these vary across countries and regions over time, and are linked to various stakeholders and possible solutions to problems.

Scan‐4‐Light demonstrates how foresight tools and techniques can be used for the analysis of complex and uncertain issues, such as development and poverty, in a systemic way.

The Scan‐4‐Light approach can be applied in a number of areas for scanning and identifying emerging trends and issues, and understanding the relationships between systems and solutions.

The paper gives evidence that most of the issues, if not all, related to development are not isolated, but interlinked and interconnected. They require more holistic understanding and intervention with an effective collaboration between stakeholders.

A demonstration of a novel scanning approach is presented in the paper.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the reasons why the concept of a “strategic early warning system” (SEWS) has not been widely introduced and why it fails to be implemented successfully in German corporations. The aim of such systems is to detect changes in an organizational environment ahead of time by scanning the environment for “weak signals”, which come in the form of trends.

The questions that arise, particularly because the concept of SEWS is not entirely new, are: What are the pitfalls in implementing these systems, why do they occur, and how can they be overcome? To answer these questions, a single case study was conducted.

The study suggests that the failure of SEWS is due mainly to a lack of participation of potential future users in the implementation phase, a lack of joint understanding of the nature of trends, differing and unrevealed requirements of trends by various interested parties, a broad misconception of the “weak signals” concept and trends, an excessively heavy reliance on alleged “hard data”, a lack of interaction among users, and finally a “missing link” to the strategic functions in an organization.

The results of the study are limited due to the fact that they are derived from a single case study.

The identification of pitfalls contributes to the research on implementing SEWS and this can also be linked to “strategic issue management” and the foresight process.

This paper aims to analyse the mainstream and emerging global challenges and trends in the global agriculture sector. The analysis leads to a discussion on the present state of the Russian agroindustry and possible future strategies for adaptation in the context of the rapidly changing global environment.

The design of this study is based on the application of the core methods of Foresight. First, a trend analysis is undertaken using reviews and expert methods. Trends identified are mapped using a social, technological, economic, environmental, political and value (STEEPV) framework to ensure that a broad range of trends are covered, which may be stemming from various factors affecting the agriculture sector. The analysis of the big picture of global trends and challenges, interacting with country-specific structural factors, translates are translated into the opportunities and threats, which will in turn help to develop possible strategies for adaptation.

This study develops two adaptive strategies for the development of the Russian agroindustry that are feasible in different short- and long–term time horizons. The first strategy is considered to be the most likely choice for the period before 2020. It includes radical imports’ substitution (of commodities as well as machinery and high-tech components) for ensuring national food security with inevitable temporary setbacks in efficiency and labour productivity. The second strategy, which becomes feasible after 2020, considers re-integrating Russia into global supply chains and expanding commodities exports (volumes and nomenclature) based on full-scale technological modernization with the use of international capital.

The study design is based on the assumption that Russia’s position as a country, which is highly self-sufficient on basic agricultural products and large exporter of crop commodities and fertilizers, will remain unchanged in the horizon of at least 20 years. However, long-term forecasts should also scrutinize the possibility of radical structural changes. Therefore, future research should concentrate on wild cards that can completely disrupt and transform the Russian agriculture industry and as well as the whole economy.

This paper suggests a number of recommendations on national science and technology policy for the three main industries of the Russian agricultural sector: crop husbandry, animal breeding and food processing (the fisheries sector is excluded from the scope of this paper). In addition, this paper proposes a number of measures towards alleviating the institutional barriers to raise the investment attractiveness of the sector.

The novelty of this paper lies in the originality of the research topic and methodology. The Russian agricultural sector has rarely been studied in the context of global agricultural challenges and threats taken on the highest level of aggregation beyond commodity market analysis or agro-climatic and logistics factors. There are few or no studies that lay out a map of possible long-term strategies of Russian agroindustry adaptive development. The Foresight methodology applied in this study is customized to better fit the practical purposes of the study.

The main aim of this paper is to introduce the articles of this theme issue and explain the pertinence of the strategic question.

A brief context for the strategic question is provided, as well as the issue alignment and a content analysis of the articles selected.

The profile of current and future tourists is changing. Travel consumers now want and expect accurate information to guide their choices, and these are increasingly based on quality, experimentation, willingness to undertake active holidays and to travel to sites with diverse and unique tourism products.

Collectively, the articles in this theme issue provide rich insights on key trends impacting the worldwide tourism industry, as well as suggestions on how to explore the opportunities arising from the highly competitive tourism markets. Proposals on scanning the tourism business environment are also presented and their importance discussed and illustrated.

From various angles of analysis, the final articles for this issue explore the trends and issues affecting the tourism industry, as well as approaches to scan the tourism business environment.

The Rockefeller Foundation has developed the first‐of‐its‐kind trend monitoring effort in the philanthropic and broader social sector, conceptualizing and operationalizing an approach that surfaces cutting‐edge intelligence with a distinctly on‐the‐ground perspective from individuals and institutions living and working throughout the developing world, known as the Searchlight function. The Searchlight function consists of a network of forward‐looking, regionally focused horizon scanning and trend monitoring organizations that conduct regular, ongoing scanning for novel ideas, research results, and “clues” as to where the world is evolving. This article aims to focus on the Searchlight function and to introduce the Special Issue.

The article describes the goals and evolution of the Searchlight function, an important set of lessons learned, and an overview of the synthesis and visualization efforts that have been applied to the Searchlight outputs.

The insights demonstrate that multiple, complementary synthesis and visualization methods can be applied to pull together the findings from a diverse range of horizon scanning activities. These cover a broad spectrum of approaches, ranging from the qualitative to the quantitative, from automated to non‐automated, from local to global, and from top‐down to bottom‐up. They show how different audiences can be reached effectively, from engaging the interested lay public to producing materials for experts in the field.

The articles outlined help to advance methodological thinking and provide benchmarks for horizon scanning, trend synthesis, and visualization that the foresight field can learn from and adopt over time.

Organizations across a range of sectors face the common challenge of how to monitor the current context in which they operate. While governments and businesses have developed novel ways of generating, processing, and acting on timely information that has long‐term relevance and significance, the development and philanthropic sectors have generally been slow to adopt these foresight practices. The Searchlight function is beginning to fill this gap in the social sector.

The Searchlight function demonstrates how the practice of anticipating and tracking trends and envisioning different alternatives for how global issues might evolve can be harnessed to shape the future of human development and to improve the lives of poor and vulnerable populations. Creating such a global endeavor on this scale requires an iterative process linking together talented and committed individuals and institutions dedicated to a common goal.

The Searchlight function demonstrates one way that the philanthropic and broader social sector can take steps to think and act with the long‐term future more explicitly in mind by anticipating the most challenging problems and opportunities that might impact the lives of poor or vulnerable populations over the long‐term future. It shows how an organization can use trend monitoring and horizon scanning to better understand how the dynamic issues facing poor and vulnerable populations intertwine to create the complex realities of today and how they might fit together to illuminate the new realities of tomorrow.

A SWOT analysis is used to perform a content analysis on the proceedings of The Portuguese Hotels Association Conferences (1993‐1999). The analysis undertaken aimed to identify the main trends and key issues in the Portuguese tourism and hospitality sectors. From the analysis it is identified that there is an absence of a clear and enduring strategy on issues like differentiation and positioning of its products and services, marketing research and product portfolio management. The analysis of the sector’s main strengths against the key trends indicates that tourism and hospitality depend too much on the environmental changes. Some of the main constraints that lead to the incapacity to capitalise on the key trends are the excess of governmental control, difficulties in reaching new markets, and over‐dependence on EU funds for investments.

The adverse state of the British and World economies in recent years means that corporate executives are under heavy pressure to manage the cash flow with particular care. The survival of many companies and some industries is threatened, and causes attention to focus on the short term survival needs which require immediate action. Those activities which are analogous to repairing a breached dam may be the most urgent, but other issues have comparable importance, even though it is difficult to find time to give them attention.