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The purpose of this case study is to explore the construction pattern and issues involved with the development of the National Science and Technology Library (NSTL) in China.

This study was conducted through an analytical evaluation of the historical development of scientific and technological information sharing among libraries and information centers and issues around construction of the NSTL.

Since the establishment of its network service system at the end of 2000, the NSTL has made rapid progress in constructing a sci‐tech information resource sharing system and offering web‐based information services to the patrons of scientific and technical communities all over China.

This paper is the first exploration that brings to the forefront the foundational background of the NSTL, the characteristics of its organizational structure, the functions of its service, and the tentative plan to increase its accessibility and usability. Symptomatic of the function of the NSTL constructing pattern will hopefully shed light not only to the reformation of the Chinese sci‐tech information management system, but also to the development of scientific digital libraries in the world.

Commercial document supply and full‐text online databases play significant roles in the shift from “ownership” to “access”. The escalating costs of science and technology journals, budgetary constraints, and availability of sci‐tech literature via non‐traditional sources, such as commercial document supply and full‐text online databases, are reshaping academic libraries’ sci‐tech collections, as well as the modes of accessing and delivering scientific information. Examines the value and the effectiveness of commercial document supply services and full‐text online databases in accessing sci‐tech information and discusses the impacts of budgetary limits and technology on academic libraries acquiring sci‐tech literature.

This study aims to discuss the creation and development of China’s National Science and Technology Library (NSTL), provide an overview of the information services it provides for sci-tech researchers throughout the People’s Republic of China, and highlight the leading role it plays in fostering scientific innovation in China.

The author uses a case study approach based on his own professional experience at the NSTL.

The NSTL offers a wide variety of information, reference and document delivery services for sci-tech researchers in China.

The NSTL plays a leading role in the provision and innovation of such services, and as such has a direct and positive impact on the quality of scientific research and innovation in China.

With the government’s increased investment in sci-tech and the requirement of scientific research management, RMAs have gradually flourished in China after the 1980s. However, there is no professional qualification specifically for RMA in China and RMA professionals are from various departments. With the arrival of the 21st century, the rapid development of sci-tech has led to the strengthening of the position and role of RMA in research activities. The profession of RMA has made great progress, and a professional contingent of RMA has gradually been formed. This chapter will review the history and development of RMAs in China. Specifically, it includes the evolutionary history of China’s sci-tech policy, how RMAs developed as a profession, current state of RMAs, the size and nature of the RMA profession (taking the academic community CASSSP as an example), and future trends of RMAs in China.

To analyze the historical significance of Donald J. Urquhart, who established the National Lending Library for Science and Technology (NLL) which later was merged into the British Library Lending Division (BLLD), now called the British Library Document Supply Centre (BLDSC). His significance will be considered from the perspective of the development of science as a whole as well as library and information science in particular.

The paper presents a short history of the probabilistic revolution, particularly as it developed in Britain in the form of biometric statistics due to Darwin's theory of evolution. It focuses on the overthrow of the normal paradigm, according to which frequency distributions in nature and society conform to the normal law of error. The paper discusses the importance of the Poisson distribution and its utilization in the construction of stochastic models that better describe reality. Here the focus is on the compound Poisson distribution in the form of the negative binomial distribution (NBD). The paper then shows how Urquhart extended the probabilistic revolution to librarianship by using the Poisson as the probabilistic model in his analyses of the 1956 external loans made by the Science Museum Library (SML) as well as in his management of the scientific and technical (sci/tech) journal collection of the NLL. Due to this, Urquhart can be considered as playing a pivotal role in the creation of bibliometrics or the statistical bases of modern library and information science. The paper relates how Urquhart's son and daughter‐in‐law, John A. and Norma C. Urquhart, completed Urquhart's probabilistic breakthrough by advancing for the first time the NBD as the model for library use in a study done at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, connecting bibliometrics with biometrics. It concludes with a discussion of Urquhart's Law and its probabilistic implications for the use of sci/tech journals in a library system.

By being the first librarian to apply probability to the analysis of sci/tech journal use, Urquhart was instrumental in the creation of modern library and information science. His findings force a probabilistic re‐conceptualization of sci/tech journal use in a library system that has great implications for the transition of sci/tech journals from locally held paper copies to shared electronic databases.

This is the second part of an article describing the seminal contribution of Donald Urquhart to the development of document supply in the UK and internationally.

The purpose of this article is to analyze the historical significance of Donald J. Urquhart, who established the National Lending Library for Science and Technology (NLL) that later was merged into the British Library Lending Division (BLLD), now called the British Library Document Supply Centre (BLDSC).

The paper presents a short history of the probabilistic revolution, particularly as it developed in the UK in the form of biometric statistics due to Darwin's theory of evolution. It focuses on the overthrow of the normal paradigm, according to which frequency distributions in nature and society conform to the normal law of error. The paper discusses the importance of the Poisson distribution and its utilization in the construction of stochastic models that better describe reality. Here the focus is on the compound Poisson distribution in the form of the negative binomial distribution (NBD). The paper then shows how Urquhart extended the probabilistic revolution to librarianship by using the Poisson as the probabilistic model in his analyses of the 1956 external loans made by the Science Museum Library (SML) as well as in his management of the scientific and technical (sci/tech) journal collection of the NLL. Thanks to this, Urquhart can be considered as playing a pivotal role in the creation of bibliometrics or the statistical bases of modern library and information science. The paper relates how Urquhart's son and daughter‐in‐law, John A. and Norma C. Urquhart, completed Urquhart's probabilistic breakthrough by advancing for the first time the NBD as the model for library use in a study executed at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, connecting bibliometrics with biometrics. It concludes with a discussion of Urquhart's Law and its probabilistic implications for the use of sci/tech journals in a library system.

By being the first librarian to apply probability to the analysis of sci/tech journal use, Urquhart was instrumental in the creation of modern library and information science. His findings force a probabilistic re‐conceptualization of sci/tech journal use in a library system that has great implications for the transition of sci/tech journals from locally held paper copies to shared electronic databases.

Urquhart's significance is considered from the perspective of the development of science as a whole as well as library and information science in particular.

The purpose of this paper is to construct a novel delay grey incidence analysis model to analyze drivers and obstacles of university R&D performance.

With respect to the fact that university R&D activities typically experience two stages of knowledge creation and technology transfer, and different drivers and obstacles come into play to affect the conversion of R&D investment to outcomes at each stage, based on the thought of grey incidence analysis and the specific characteristics of science and technology (sci-tech) development, a novel delay grey incidence analysis model is proposed in this paper, and then according to the yearbook statistical data, Chinese university R&D activities are investigated and the drivers and obstacles of university R&D performance are analyzed.

The results show that the R&D full-time staff and R&D funds of basic research are the key drivers of influencing factors, and the sci-tech innovation talents in universities’ R&D institutions and experiment development funds are the restraining factors to improve R&D performance in the stage of knowledge creation; the expenses of R&D achievement application and technology service and the full-time staff of achievement application and technology service are the key drivers and obstacles of influencing the aggregate amount of patent sale respectively.

This research helps policy makers to reflect on their university R&D policies and understand how to enhance the technology transfer rate in China.

The paper succeeds in identifying key drivers and obstacles of affecting university R&D performance in China by examining the input and output incidence at both the knowledge creation and technology transfer stages.

This paper gives a bibliographical review of the finite element methods (FEMs) applied to the analysis of ceramics and glass materials. The bibliography at the end of the paper contains references to papers, conference proceedings and theses/dissertations on the subject that were published between 1977‐1998. The following topics are included: ceramics – material and mechanical properties in general, ceramic coatings and joining problems, ceramic composites, ferrites, piezoceramics, ceramic tools and machining, material processing simulations, fracture mechanics and damage, applications of ceramic/composites in engineering; glass – material and mechanical properties in general, glass fiber composites, material processing simulations, fracture mechanics and damage, and applications of glasses in engineering.

This article discusses the development of document database construction in China from the end of the 1970s, including management systems, operation mechanisms of Chinese document database construction in the 1990s, as well as the main products and condition of various document databases.

To address the gap of divergent conclusions on the impact of knowledge search (KS) on performance, this paper aims to discuss the nonlinear relationships between KS and reverse internationalization enterprise (RIE) performance, and the co-moderation of causation and effectuation (C&E) on KS–performance.

The proposed theoretical model is developed by integrating the theory of knowledge-based view and decision rationality theory. The empirical study is based on survey data collected from 245 RIEs of the Yangtze River Delta and Pearl River Delta regions in China. Hierarchical multiple regression and the appropriate U-test method are used to test the hypotheses.

Empirical results suggest that both focused and multi-focus searches have inverted U-shaped effects on RIE performance. Furthermore, causation weakens the curvilinear effect between multi-focus search and RIE performance, whereas effectuation strengthens the curvilinear effect but weakens the inverted U-shaped relationship between focused search and RIE performance. Results also indicate that the integration of C&E positively moderates the relationship between focused or multi-focus searches and RIE performance.

Findings reveal the nonlinear effects of focused and multi-focus searches on RIE performance and clarify the dispute over the mechanism of KS on performance by proposing the different moderating role of C&E. Moreover, this research provides deeper insight into contingency mechanisms between KS and performance by integrating the co-moderating role of C&E in RIEs.