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This study aims to analyse the geographical distribution of global research activities and to investigate the knowledge diffusion embodied in scientific papers.

The geographical summary of Frontiers articles displays the number of visits and categorizes where the visitors hail from. This study uses the records of 23,798 articles published in 16 Frontiers journals from 2007 to 2015 to analyse the geographical distribution of article visits at both country and city levels. The process of knowledge diffusion is investigated on the basis of the different visiting patterns of new and old papers.

Most article visits are concentrated around major metropolitan areas and some high-tech clusters. The top “visiting countries” include both developed countries and developing countries, and the USA and China are two major players. Publishing cities dominate article visits for new papers; as time passes, there is diffusion from the publishing cities to a broader area.

The data on visiting for open access articles may be generated from various repositories besides the publishers’ websites; these data are ignored, as they are not significant enough to have much influence. There is also a lack of a basic theory in the data processing of outliers in the data set. In addition, only static results are given in this paper, as the data were collected on one day, for one time. A longer time period is necessary to track the dynamic diffusion process of the observations.

Introduction of usage data will propose a novel way to analyse research activities and track knowledge diffusion.

The visiting data of articles offer a new way to investigate research activities at the city level in a detailed and timely manner, for the geographical distribution of research activities and the research resource allocation of a specific country to be explored.

This study measured the research activities of scientific papers by examining the usage data. Compared with previous studies that focused on the geographical distribution of scientific activities using publication data, citation data and even altmetrics data, usage data are at the forefront of this research. Therefore, usage data offer a fresh perspective on methodology, providing more detailed and real-time information.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the evolution of Gold open access (OA) rates in different countries and disciplines, as well as explore the influencing factors.

In this study, employing the OA filter option of Web of Science (WoS), the authors perform a large-scale evaluation of the OA state of countries and disciplines from 1990 to 2016. Particularly, the authors consider not only the absolute number of Gold OA literature but also the ratio of them among all literature.

Currently, one-quarter of the WoS articles is Gold OA articles. Brazil is the most active country in OA publishing, while Russia, India and China have the lowest OA ratios. The OA percentage of Brazil has been decreasing dramatically in recent years, while the OA percentages of China, UK and the Netherlands have been increasing. There also exist huge differences of OA percentages across different subject categories. The percentages of OA articles in biology, life, and health-related areas are high, while those in physics and chemistry-related subject categories are very low.

With the availability of large-scale data from WoS, this study conducts a comprehensive evaluation of the Gold OA state of major countries for the first time. The variation of OA percentages is considered in light of the research profiles. OA policies in different countries and funding organizations also have an influence on the OA development.

Blueberry contains bioactive compounds which are beneficial to organisms, such as phenolics and flavonoids. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the potential protective effects of blueberry extracts (BE) on H₂O₂-induced HepG2 cells.

Cell protection was evaluated via the survivals of the cell. Reactive oxygen species (ROS) level, antioxidant enzyme and malondialdehyde (MDA) were detected. Western blot was carried out to analysis protein which was related to the cell apoptosis pathway. Changes in morphology including: cell total apoptosis/necrosis and G0/G1 cycle arresting were also concomitant.

The levels of ROS and malondialdehyde (MDA) reduced after the BE treatment while the contents of superoxide dismutase, and glutathione peroxidase (GSH-Px) increased in HepG2 cells induced by H2O2. Furthermore, mechanistic studies indicated that BE regulated the activation of mitochondrial apoptosis signal-regulating (Bcl-2, Bax). Qu was used as a positive control group. All these results demonstrated that the BE have a potential against oxidative stress in vitro.

Few studies have focused on the bioactivities of blueberry on oxidative stress. Taken together, the results confirm that polyphenol-enriched BE have the ability to protect against oxidative stress in cells. It has a great potential as a functional food ingredient to health benefits. Furthermore, this work showed the value of using simple biological models to screen for compounds that are of interest for food and pharmacological industry.

Drawing on power approach-inhibition theory, this study develops a conditional indirect effect model to explore how team vertical leader position and expert power indirectly impact members’ shared leadership through vertical leader’s empowering behaviors.

Multi-source data was collected using a field survey research design. The final sample includes 944 employees in 164 teams from 14 companies in China.

This study found that the interaction of team vertical leader position power and expert power was positively related to their empowering behaviors, which in turn were positively associated with shared leadership. Moreover, our post hoc-analysis revealed the moderating effect of team power distance orientation on the relationship between vertical leader empowering behaviors and shared leadership.

This study sheds light on shared leadership literature by examining vertical leader position and expert power as antecedents. We also offer new directions for exploring how power functions by discussing leadership through the lens of power approach-inhibition theory.

This paper aims to numerically investigate the natural convection heat transfer of multi-wall carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs)-water nanofluid in U-shaped enclosure equipped with a hot obstacle by using the lattice Boltzmann method.

The combination of the three topics (U-shaped enclosure, different positions of the hot obstacle and MWCNTs-water nanofluid) is innovative in the present study. In total, 15 different positions of the hot obstacle have been arranged, and the effects of pertinent parameters such as Rayleigh numbers, the solid volume fraction of the MWCNTs nanoparticles on the flow field, temperature distribution and the rate of heat transfer inside the enclosure are also investigated.

It is found that the average Nusselt number increased by raising the Rayleigh number, and so did the nanoparticle solid volume fraction regardless the position of the hot obstacle. Moreover, enclosures where the hot obstacle is located at the bottom region proved to provide a better rate of heat transfer at high Rayleigh number (106). It is concluded that at a low Ra number (103-105), the higher heat transfer rate and Nu number will be obtained when the hot obstacle is located in the left or right channel.

In the literature, no trace of studying the natural convection of nanofluids in U-shaped enclosures with heating obstacles was found. Also, MWCNTs were less used as nanoparticles. As the natural convection of nanofluids in thermal engineering applications would expand the existing knowledge, the current researchers conducted a numerical study of the natural convection of Maxwell nanofluid with MWCNTs in U-shaped enclosure equipped with a hot obstacle by using lattice Boltzmann method.

Customer co-creation behaviors significantly affect a firm's performance and sustainable growth. This study tested the mediating role of corporate reputation in the relationship between corporate hypocrisy and two types of customer co-creation behaviors: customer citizenship behavior and customer participation behavior. The study also investigated the moderating effect of self-corporate brand connection on the corporate hypocrisy–corporate reputation relationship and the indirect relationship between corporate hypocrisy and customer co-creation behavior through corporate reputation.

The authors conducted a two-wave research survey with 346 Korean bank customers and tested our hypotheses using PROCESS Macro.

Corporate reputation mediated the relationship between corporate hypocrisy and customer citizenship/participant behavior. The negative effect of corporate hypocrisy on corporate reputation was more pronounced when self-corporate brand connection was high. Self-corporate brand connection further moderated the indirect effect of corporate hypocrisy on customer citizenship/participant behavior through corporate reputation.

The results clearly explain how corporate hypocrisy affects customer co-creation behavior. This study advances corporate hypocrisy and corporate reputation research by proposing and verifying a moderated mediation model.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate factors influencing intent to adopt unmanned aerial vehicles for use in agricultural operations in Jilin Province, China.

This paper uses probit analysis to estimate the influence of factors on intent to adopt unmanned aerial vehicles for plant protection application operations in Jilin Province, China based on the Technology Acceptance Model.

UAV technology is acceptable to most participating farmers. Gender (male), agricultural income ratio, understanding of new technology, perceived ease-of-use and perceived usefulness have a positive relationship with farmers’ willingness to adopt UAVs.

For application, crop monitoring and other farm operations, UAVs have clear advantages. There remain challenges associated with the development of applicable technology and facilitating adoption among farmers. Understanding factors affecting adoption will contribute to the latter, and brings forth the following recommendations: conduct research on the cost effectiveness of UAVs for agriculture; accelerate development of the information service system; and increase financial support.

This paper is among the first to consider adoption intent among Chinese farmers of use of UAVs for agricultural operations.

The paper is to explore crowdfunding success determinants from the reward menu design aspect, distinguishing from extant studies focusing on characteristics of project creators or crowdfunding projects and funding dynamics. Both the number of reward options and price differentiation of rewards are considered.

The authors use the quadratic model to identify a curvilinear relationship between the number of reward options and crowdfunding success, by running regressions on data collected from one of the most influential reward-based crowdfunding platforms in China. In addition, they explore the moderating effect of price differentiation on the curvilinear relationship.

The authors find an inverted U-shape relationship between the number of reward options and the optimal number of options is around 10. In addition, they find that the curvilinear relationship is moderated by reward price differentiation.

This paper has managerial implications for crowdfunding project creators and platform managers. To achieve better crowdfunding outcomes, a proper number of reward options with diversified reward prices should be provided.

The paper contributes to the literatures in antecedents of crowdfunding success from reward menu design aspect based on theories in investment and purchasing decision making. It is different from existing studies focusing on the characteristics of project creators and crowdfunding projects or funding dynamics. It also parallels retirement contribution plan design studies by exploring the reward menu design in the crowdfunding context.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a measurement of creativity-oriented HRM systems that improve organizational creativity. This paper also aims to explore the mechanisms between them by investigating the mediating role of innovative culture and the moderating role of customer orientation.

The study uses a sample of 82 knowledge-intensive companies with 780 respondents consisting of 145 HR professionals, 512 core knowledge workers and 123 top managers in China. Exploratory factor analysis, confirmatory factor analysis and regression analysis are used to validate the measure of creativity-oriented HRM systems and test hypotheses.

This study finds that creativity-oriented HRM systems are composed of three dimensions, which are creative skill-enhancing practices, intrinsic motivation-enhancing practices and empowerment-enhancing practices. These practices significantly improve organizational creativity through innovative culture. Furthermore, customer orientation moderates the effect of innovative culture on organizational creativity in such a way that the positive relationship is stronger when customer orientation is high.

This study contributes to the strategic human resource management literature by developing and validating a measure of creativity-oriented HRM systems. Moreover, it also explores the mechanism between creativity-oriented HRM systems and organizational creativity based on a complementary perspective of innovativeness, which underlines the important mediating effect of innovative culture. More importantly, the authors propose the significance of absorbing knowledge and information from customers and put forward the moderating role that customer orientation plays, especially in an emerging country context such as China.

City wall is an important symbol of ancient Chinese cities with unique geographical and cultural characteristics. Thus, the preservation of this historic landmark is considered significantly important. However, numerous residential construction activities and changes in ecological environment have destructed a great portion of the city walls in recent years. This study looks into the preservation of the ancient city walls from the systematic perspective and in line with the actual characteristics of Longdong Region to provide guideline measures for the protection and restoration of such landmark. Cognition and preservation are adopted extensively to investigate the specific situation of and the factors that influence the ancient city walls in this region. Preservation strategies for the city walls, including the “Axis-Point” system, planning control, and authenticity readability, are presented. The ancient city walls in Longdong Region can be preserved by protecting the entire region, the city, and the main wall body. The systematic method and preservation strategies at the “macro perspective,” “medium perspective” and “micro perspective” levels can solve the preservation problems of the ancient city walls in Longdong Region effectively.