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The paper seeks to emphasize the necessity of evaluating the library resources in terms of their quality, cost benefit and usefulness.

In the context of subscribing to the latest e‐journal databases in university libraries, different types of usage studies are discussed, including the recent application of usage log data or vendor reports. The genesis, standardization of usage reports and the significance of COUNTER statistics in establishing the usefulness of the e‐journals are described. The use of various electronic databases by the University of Hyderabad academic community is referred to according to these statistics/reports, mentioning the way in which it is helpful to university library in assessing their actual usage and usefulness.

The paper highlights the application of usage reports by the university library in decision making during renewals/subscriptions, i.e. the selection of databases, upgrading the versions, increasing licences, cancellation of subscriptions, etc.

All in all, it is established that the usage reports are to be taken as a support to library decision‐making activity, since it reflects the true value of e‐journals/databases.

This study provides necessary direction to library management regarding the utilization of log data for assessing the true value of e‐journals/databases. Thus the usage statistics can be studied and this analysis will invariably support the complex decision‐making activity of serials management in university libraries.

The aim of this paper is to explore digital user behaviour of academicians in Kashmir (Indian Administered) in the times of conflict (2008-2010) and peace (2011-2012). It is an attempt to investigate the influence of political conditions on the usage of electronic resources.

Transaction logs in the form of COUNTER reports from Project MUSE database that represent usage at University of Kashmir, were mined for five years – January 2008 to December 2012. The data was divided in to two time periods; conflict period – 2008 to 2010 and peace period – 2011 to 2012.

There is a strong relationship between peace, conflict and e-resource usage. The results confirm peace and conflict as explanatory factors on the use of electronic resources in conflict zones, like Kashmir.

Understanding how users behave in the online academic environments, the academic administrators can help to satisfy the perceptions and needs of users associated with the electronic resource settings.

The study shows that more attention should be given to prevail peace in conflict zones in order to maximise the use of e-resources.

The study is the first of its kind as it is trying to relate the user behaviour with political setups in a conflict zone, Kashmir.

This study aims to explore the evidence-based patterns of e-journal usage, such as the most used and least used databases, at a public-sector university in Pakistan, by analysing scientists’ usage of databases over time.

Through transaction log analysis, the frequencies of page views, sessions, session duration and size of the used data were calculated through SAWMILL software and entered into MS Excel.

The results revealed that the broad databases of science and engineering were being used more by users as compared to the narrower e-journal databases. Furthermore, the users were mostly accessing the e-journal databases from the university’s central library and its various academic departments. Early morning hours, working days and start of the academic year were found to be the most active timings of e-journal database utilisation.

The results of the study will help the Higher Education Commission (HEC) of Pakistan and information professionals in better access management of databases.

This study was conducted to check the feasibility of a PhD project’s first phase and presents the frequencies of HEC e-journal databases’ usage by using transaction log analysis method. The results will be used in preparing interview guide and sample selection for interview. Other Central Asian studies used COUNTER reports provided by publishers for log analysis instead of using raw log data.

The paper of this paper is to explore the usage patterns of e-journals in French business schools.

The paper exploits COUNTER-compliant usage statistics from a nationwide usage study with data from journal collections of an international academic publisher.

With regard to online collections, the usage appears to be relatively intensive, especially when compared to usage statistics from universities in the same fields. This result may reflect an emerging research activity in business schools and a projected and required international orientation. However, the study also reveals important differences between schools, a fact that should not be overestimated because of the small sample size, even if the sample is a representative of French business schools.

The paper uses empirical data from a national usage study to identify specific patterns in business schools. It does not integrate qualitative survey data or deep log file analysis.

Very few studies provide empirical evidence of e-journal usage in business schools. The paper enhances the knowledge on usage in specific environments in higher education. This is the first usage study with French business schools.

The main purpose of this paper is to describe the use of e-resources at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), those are being offered through the University Grant Commission – Information and Library Network (UGC-INFONET) consortium. Statistical techniques are applied on usage reports generated by e-resources vendors/publishers to understand trend and seasonality in usages of e-resources in academic libraries. The researchers evaluated gain in popularity of e-resources and drew a comparison in use of various databases of e-resources in terms of volume of downloads over a period of three years. The study would help in designing an instrument to evaluate utilization of e-resources. The cross comparison of databases helps in identifying e-resources, which have been optimally used.

The present study used quantitative approach to express utilization of e-resources in terms of number of downloads of full text research papers from Project Muse, Cambridge University Press, Oxford University Press, Springer Links, Taylor and Francis and JSTOR databases, accessible through the UGC-INFONET consortium. The investigation is based on secondary data of usage statistics made available by the UGC-INFONET consortium. The descriptive statistics techniques have been used in the initial phase of the investigation to understand trend in utilization of e-resources and examine robustness of various statistical tests to identify most appropriate tests for the latter phase of the investigation. The robustness analysis has been recommended for graphical and non-parametric tests for advanced investigation, in the latter phase of the study. The with-in cohort analysis techniques investigates numbers of monthly downloads from each database for a period of three years, i.e. 2008-2010 to explain seasonality in volume of downloads of e-resources.

e-Resources have been gaining popularity gradually in academic libraries; this trend is in tune with gaining of popularity of web-based intellectual resources in other sectors. The study established need of library consortium for sharing resources and subscription fee. The investigation proves significant association between numbers of downloads of e-resources from different databases in the same period; thus gain in popularity of one database encourages readers to explore other databases. The study indicates seasonality effect in the usages of e-resources in academic libraries. This seasonality effect is contemporary to the academic calendar. There are large numbers of downloads just before the examinations, which are held twice in a year and negligible number of downloads during and around long summer study breaks. Thus, the bandwidth rendered to the university is not consistently used during the academic session. The coverage of databases in terms of disciplines and numbers of journals varies to great extent. There is overlapping in the coverage of databases. The strength of students and their demands for scholarly works also vary across disciplines, thus cross comparison of numbers of downloads from databases has little meaning until impact of these three parameters are not controlled in the investigation of utilization of e-resources.

The literature shows that no study has been carried out for the use of e-resources by researchers of JNU.

This study aims to examine the impact of the transformation of an assessment on students’ performance and perspectives in an English for Academic Purposes course in Hong Kong. The assessment was changed from the traditional pen-and-paper mode to an unproctored online mode.

Using mixed methods, the research team analysed the differences between the assessment performances of those who took the course before the pandemic (n = 664) and those who took it during the pandemic (n = 702). Furthermore, focus group interviews were conducted with seven students regarding their perspectives on the unproctored assessment.

The results revealed that, although there were no major differences in the overall grades of the two groups, students who were assessed online during the pandemic performed significantly better in terms of their English use. Nevertheless, the shift to online assessment had several negative effects on the students.

Previous studies on unproctored online assessments (UOA) were concerned with potential learning quality issues, such as plagiarism and grade inflation. This study, however, provided empirical evidence that high-quality assessment delivery can be provided via UOA if the question types and assessment arrangements are carefully decided.

This paper aims to underline the factors impacting the usage of academic journal articles by PhD students in Indian universities.

Following a detailed literature review, the paper bases itself on a grounded theory and provides insights drawn from structured interviews conducted via email with 134 PhD students who were based in public and private universities in India.

The paper underlines that there are five factors (institutional; task complexity; relevance and application; information quality; and technical) that are responsible for impacting the usage of academic journal articles by PhD students in their scholarly work. Such factors are linked with resource constraints faced by universities, lack of motivation on the part of teachers and students, non-availability of an electronic library, etc.

The present study is a major contribution to the extant literature on the usage of academic journal articles for pursuing scholarly activities.

This paper purports to study and assess the impact of student satisfaction on various services offered by an educational institution offering management education and also the word of mouth communication (WoMC) done by such student in referring the institutions to others. The study aimed at various factors like core services, facilitating services and support services offered by institutions and measured the responses of the levels of satisfaction on a five-point Likert scale.

The sample size of the study consists of 873 students pursuing management education such as BBA, BBM and MBA, belonging to government colleges, private colleges affiliated to state university, private universities and deemed universities in the state of Telangana, India.

The attributes used in this work showed positive and noteworthy impact on the students' satisfaction level though with varying degree of strength as evident from the regression analysis. However, core services (teaching quality of the faculty, their expertise and experience, course electives offered, library facilities, academic counselling services, etc.) was the most influencing factor and has highest impact on satisfaction of students amongst all the variables. Also, the study reiterates that gender of the student does not have any significant impact on the students' satisfaction on the services offered by the institutions nor on the recommendations made by them to others for admissions.

This study is unique in evaluating the determinants of students' satisfaction in a management institution/school as well as their influence of the recommendations made by them to the prospective students through word of mouth (WOM).

Based on the positive features of the shark smell optimization (SSO) algorithm, the purpose of this paper is to propose a method based on this algorithm, dynamic voltage and frequency scaling (DVFS) model and fuzzy logic to minimize the energy consumption of integrated circuits of internet of things (IoT) nodes and maximize the load-balancing among them.

Load balancing is a key problem in any distributed environment such as cloud and IoT. It is useful when a few nodes are overloaded, a few are under-loaded and the remainders are idle without interrupting the functioning. As this problem is known as an NP-hard one and SSO is a powerful meta-hybrid method that inspires shark hunting behavior and their skill to detect and feel the smell of the bait even from far away, in this research, this study have provided a new method to solve this problem using the SSO algorithm. Also, the study have synthesized the fuzzy logic to counterbalance the load distribution. Furthermore, DVFS, as a powerful energy management method, is used to reduce the energy consumption of integrated circuits of IoT nodes such as processor and circuit bus by reducing the frequency.

The outcomes of the simulation have indicated that the proposed method has outperformed the hybrid ant colony optimization – particle swarm optimization and PSO regarding energy consumption. Similarly, it has enhanced the load balance better than the moth flame optimization approach and task execution node assignment algorithm.

There are many aspects and features of IoT load-balancing that are beyond the scope of this paper. Also, given that the environment was considered static, future research can be in a dynamic environment.

The introduced method is useful for improving the performance of IoT-based applications. We can use these systems to jointly and collaboratively check, handle and control the networks in real-time. Also, the platform can be applied to monitor and control various IoT applications in manufacturing environments such as transportation systems, automated work cells, storage systems and logistics.

This study have proposed a novel load balancing technique for decreasing energy consumption using the SSO algorithm and fuzzy logic.

This study aims to examine the relationship between Achievement Motivation (AM), Smart Work (SW), and human resources (HR) performance. It questions how moral global leadership (MGL) could moderate the relationship between AM, SW, and HR performance. A theoretical model was developed and tested on sample data representing 219 employees, educators, and educational staff of Islamic Higher education (IHE). The data were collected through surveys and applied to structural equation modeling using SEM-PLS. This study found that AM and SW significantly affect HR performance. While MGL substantially moderates the relationship between AM, SW, and HR performance. This study contributes to the literature on MGL, AM, and SW in creating HR performance that has yet to be studied so far. This study offers the concept of MGL, which plays a central role in moderating the relationship between AM, SW, and HR performance.