Knowledge mapping of supply chain risk research based on CiteSpace

Supply chain risk is a relatively new research field, and research results have been published in journals, and in master and doctoral articles. In this article, we first performed a quantitative analysis of existing literature on supply chain risk indexed in Web of Science (WOS). Then, we analyzed the author, institution, keywords, research hotspot, and cocited literature of existing publications in the research field of supply chain risk by using CiteSpace. The aim of this study is to investigate the trend, geographical distribution, author distribution, research field, keywords, keyword clustering, and other features of scientific articles on supply chain risk published in global journals, using the most advanced bibliometric analysis tools. The results of this study can be used to determine the most influential research institutions and authors in the research field of supply chain risk, as well as the research hotspots in different periods, and different research directions in this field.     

Investigations about replication of empirical studies in software engineering: A systematic mapping study

ContextTwo recent mapping studies which were intended to verify the current state of replication of empirical studies in Software Engineering (SE) identified two sets of studies: empirical studies actually reporting replications (published between 1994 and 2012) and a second group of studies that are concerned with definitions, classifications, processes, guidelines, and other research topics or themes about replication work in empirical software engineering research (published between 1996 and 2012).ObjectiveIn this current article, our goal is to analyze and discuss the contents of the second set of studies about replications to increase our understanding of the current state of the work on replication in empirical software engineering research.MethodWe applied the systematic literature review method to build a systematic mapping study, in which the primary studies were collected by two previous mapping studies covering the period 1996–2012 complemented by manual and automatic search procedures that collected articles published in 2013.ResultsWe analyzed 37 papers reporting studies about replication published in the last 17 years. These papers explore different topics related to concepts and classifications, presented guidelines, and discuss theoretical issues that are relevant for our understanding of replication in our field. We also investigated how these 37 papers have been cited in the 135 replication papers published between 1994 and 2012.ConclusionsReplication in SE still lacks a set of standardized concepts and terminology, which has a negative impact on the replication work in our field. To improve this situation, it is important that the SE research community engage on an effort to create and evaluate taxonomy, frameworks, guidelines, and methodologies to fully support the development of replications.     

A systematic review of systematic review process research in software engineering

ContextMany researchers adopting systematic reviews (SRs) have also published papers discussing problems with the SR methodology and suggestions for improving it. Since guidelines for SRs in software engineering (SE) were last updated in 2007, we believe it is time to investigate whether the guidelines need to be amended in the light of recent research.ObjectiveTo identify, evaluate and synthesize research published by software engineering researchers concerning their experiences of performing SRs and their proposals for improving the SR process.MethodWe undertook a systematic review of papers reporting experiences of undertaking SRs and/or discussing techniques that could be used to improve the SR process. Studies were classified with respect to the stage in the SR process they addressed, whether they related to education or problems faced by novices and whether they proposed the use of textual analysis tools.ResultsWe identified 68 papers reporting 63 unique studies published in SE conferences and journals between 2005 and mid-2012. The most common criticisms of SRs were that they take a long time, that SE digital libraries are not appropriate for broad literature searches and that assessing the quality of empirical studies of different types is difficult.ConclusionWe recommend removing advice to use structured questions to construct search strings and including advice to use a quasi-gold standard based on a limited manual search to assist the construction of search stings and evaluation of the search process. Textual analysis tools are likely to be useful for inclusion/exclusion decisions and search string construction but require more stringent evaluation. SE researchers would benefit from tools to manage the SR process but existing tools need independent validation. Quality assessment of studies using a variety of empirical methods remains a major problem.     

Citations,research topics and active countries in software engineering: A bibliometrics study

Context: An enormous number of papers (more than 70,000) have been published in the area of Software Engineering (SE) since its inception in 1968. To better characterize and understand this massive research literature, there is a need for comprehensive bibliometrics assessments in this vibrant field.Objective: The objective of this study is to utilize automated citation and topic analysis to characterize the software engineering research literature over the years. While a few bibliometrics studies have appeared in the field of SE, this article aims to be the most comprehensive bibliometrics assessments in this vibrant field.Method: To achieve the above objective, we report in this paper a bibliometrics study with data collected from Scopus database consisting of over 70,000 articles. For thematic analysis, we used topic modeling to automatically generate the most probable topic distributions given the data.Results: We found that number of papers published per year has grown tremendously and currently 6000–7000 papers are published every year. At the same time, nearly half of the papers are not cited at all. Using text mining of articles titles, we found that currently the hot research topics in software engineering are: (1) web services, (2) mobile and cloud computing, (3) industrial (case) studies, (4) source code and (5) test generation. Finally, we found that a small share of large countries produce the majority of the papers in SE while small European countries are proportionally the most active in the area of SE, based on the number of papers.Conclusion: Due to large volumes of research in SE, we suggest using the automated analysis of bibliometrics as we have done in this paper. By picking out the most cited papers, we can present the land marks of SE and, with thematic analysis, we can characterize the entire field. This can be useful for students and other new comers to SE and for presenting our achievements to other disciplines. In particular, we see and report the value of such an analysis in situations where performing a full scale SLR is not feasible due to restrictions on time or to lack of exact research questions.     

On the nationality balance of authors and references in selected MIS journals

Citation analysis is an established technique in literature analysis. It can be used to reveal citation patterns and thus results stemming from the analysis, including co-citation patterns and groupings of researchers, even reveal paradigmatic schools within a certain field. In this article, twelve major MIS journals — six European and six American — are studied to find out whether there are any differences in author selection and referencing patterns. It was discovered that the American MIS community is much more self-sustaining than the European one, which relies heavily on work by American authors. This points either to the superiority of the American MIS community, or the under-appreciation of foreign research, or possibly both. On the European side, the result might be interpreted as a sign of low-quality research, lack of self-esteem and pride, or again both. Clear differences between the editorial policy of the journals can be discerned: some journals accept the American hegemony; some try to maintain a balance between contributions from different countries; and some favour European research.     

Citation-based journal rankings for expert system research

Abstract: Research into the development and impacts of expert systems has accumulated to a point where it may be said to constitute a distinct field of study. As such, the evolution, organisation and dissemination of expert system research are themselves topics for investigation. Here we focus on the dissemination aspect, providing objective rankings of journals that have had the greatest impacts on recent expert system research. Our study examines the citation patterns of all research published in five expert systems journals during the past five years. Over 14 000 citations to more than 800 journals are analysed under two kinds of ranking schemes. These are based on cumulative citation counts and normalised citation counts. The latter adjusts for the number of years a journal article has been available to be cited. The reported rankings will be of interest to all who want to know where scientific developments that influence expert system research are reported: those who conduct, support, evaluate and study expert system research.     

中国图象工程：2000

为了使国内广大从事图象工程研究和图象技术应用的科技人员能够较全面地了解国内图象工程研究和发展的现状,并能够方便地查询有关文献,现从2000年在国内15种有关图象工程重要中文期刊上发表的2100余篇学术研究和技术应用论文中,选取出400多篇属于图象工程领域的文献,然后根据各文献的主要内容进行了分类统计分析,其中,类别划分还结合国内图象工程的发展,增加了有关新热点的类别。根据统计分析可见,我国图象工程2000年年又有了许多新的进展,如有关知识产权保护、人机交互、多媒体信息处理等新研究热点的文献大幅度增,图象技术的应用面也正不断拓宽。     

Optimistic bias in classification accuracy assessment

There are many sources of both conservative and optimistic bias in classification accuracy assessment. In this Letter, we discuss three sources of optimistic bias: use of training data for accuracy assessment, restriction of reference data sampling to homogeneous areas, and sampling of reference data not independent of training data. The magnitude and direction of bias in classification accuracy estimates depends on the methods used for classification and reference data sampling. However, based on our review of 1994 papers published in three remote sensing journals, we conclude that many studies currently do not report their methods in sufficient detail to enable readers to assess the potential for bias in classification accuracy estimates     

Empirical Research in Software Engineering — A Literature Survey

Empirical research is playing a significant role in software engineering (SE), and it has been applied to evaluate software artifacts and technologies. There have been a great number of empirical research articles published recently. There is also a large research community in empirical software engineering (ESE). In this paper, we identify both the overall landscape and detailed implementations of ESE, and investigate frequently applied empirical methods, targeted research purposes, used data sources, and applied data processing approaches and tools in ESE. The aim is to identify new trends and obtain interesting observations of empirical software engineering across different sub-fields of software engineering. We conduct a mapping study on 538 selected articles from January 2013 to November 2017, with four research questions. We observe that the trend of applying empirical methods in software engineering is continuously increasing and the most commonly applied methods are experiment, case study and survey. Moreover, open source projects are the most frequently used data sources. We also observe that most of researchers have paid attention to the validity and the possibility to replicate their studies. These observations are carefully analyzed and presented as carefully designed diagrams. We also reveal shortcomings and demanded knowledge/strategies in ESE and propose recommendations for researchers.     

A meta-analysis of e-learning technology acceptance: The role of user types and e-learning technology types

Existing literature in the field of e-learning technology acceptance reflects a significant number of independent studies that primarily investigate the causal relationships proposed by technology acceptance theory, such as the technology acceptance model (TAM). To synthesize the existing knowledge in the field of e-learning technology acceptance, we have conducted a systematic literature review of 42 independent papers, mostly published in major journals. Furthermore, in order to view the research context by combining and analyzing the quantitative results of the reviewed research studies, a meta-analysis of the causal effect sizes between common TAM-related relationships was conducted. The main findings of this study, which is the first of its kind, are: (1) TAM is the most-used acceptance theory in e-learning acceptance research, and (2) the size of the causal effects between individual TAM-related factors depends on the type of user and the type of e-learning technology. The results of the meta-analysis demonstrated a moderating effect for user-related factors and technology-related factors for several evaluated causal paths. We have gathered proof that the perceived ease of use and the perceived usefulness tend to be the factors that can influence the attitudes of users toward using an e-learning technology in equal measure for different user types and types of e-learning technology settings.     

The Evolution of the Design Management Field: A Journal Perspective

Based on a literature survey of the development of concepts supplemented by a selective literature review for the years 2000 to 2010, this article aims to trace the dynamic development of the field of design management – a cross‐disciplinary research field seeking to establish itself in its own right. The framework of this research is evolutionary theory, and our analysis are based on two prime design management journals followed by a comparative review two adjunct journals The Design Journal and Creativity and Innovation Management. The challenge is to avoid being overwhelmed by the established paradigms and logics dominating the field of management research. As far as this limited study of adjunct journals indicates, design management as a field of study has not yet been able to acquire attention outside the design research community.     

Research in software engineering: an analysis of the literature

In this paper, we examine the state of software engineering (SE) research from the point of view of the following research questions:

• 1.What topics do SE researchers address?
• 2.What research approaches do SE researchers use?
• 3.What research methods do SE researchers use?
• 4.On what reference disciplines does SE research depend?
• 5.At what levels of analysis do SE researchers conduct research?

To answer those questions, we examined 369 papers in six leading research journals in the SE field, answering those research questions for each paper.From that examination, we conclude that SE research is diverse regarding topic, narrow regarding research approach and method, inwardly-focused regarding reference discipline, and technically focused (as opposed to behaviorally focused) regarding level of analysis.We pass no judgment on the SE field as a result of these findings. Instead, we present them as groundwork for future SE research efforts.     

Information systems action research: Debunking myths and overcoming barriers

The relevance of action research as a research method in the information systems (IS) discipline is not disputed. Nevertheless, the extent to which action research is published in good journals is infrequent enough to indicate a serious problem. In this article, we explore the reasons underlying this situation and make recommendations aiming to increase both the practice and the publication of action research. To identify both the barriers to undertaking action research and potential ways of overcoming those barriers, we survey 218 authors of 120 articles demonstrating empirical action research published in 12 of our good journals during the period 1982–2016. We received 70 usable responses. We also surveyed 52 editors of selected IS journals and received 25 usable responses. Our findings are revealing as they indicate both genuine barriers associated with action research and some apparent barriers that are in reality misperceptions or myths. In reflecting on these, we emphasize the special qualities of action research. We also reflect on the critical role that action research plays in the IS field as a whole and its potential for further contributions to research and practice, given the strong and close connections with organizational problem contexts that action research requires. Finally, we make a number of recommendations that are designed to increase the incidence of action research in the IS discipline     

Speech emotion recognition research: an analysis of research focus

This article analyses research in speech emotion recognition (“SER”) from 2006 to 2017 in order to identify the current focus of research, and areas in which research is lacking. The objective is to examine what is being done in this field of research. Searching on selected keywords, we extracted and analysed 260 articles from well-known online databases. The analysis indicates that SER research is an active field of research, dozens of articles being published each year in journals and conference proceedings. The majority of articles concentrate on three critical aspects of SER, namely (1) databases, (2) suitable speech features, and (3) classification techniques to maximize the recognition accuracy of SER systems. Having carried out association analysis of the critical aspects and how they influence the performance of the SER system in term of recognition accuracy, we found that certain combination of databases, speech features and classifiers influence the recognition accuracy of the SER system. We have also suggested aspects of SER that could be taken into consideration in future works based on our review.     

Graphical user interface (GUI) testing: Systematic mapping and repository

ContextGUI testing is system testing of a software that has a graphical-user interface (GUI) front-end. Because system testing entails that the entire software system, including the user interface, be tested as a whole, during GUI testing, test cases—modeled as sequences of user input events—are developed and executed on the software by exercising the GUI’s widgets (e.g., text boxes and clickable buttons). More than 230 articles have appeared in the area of GUI testing since 1991.ObjectiveIn this paper, we study this existing body of knowledge using a systematic mapping (SM).MethodThe SM is conducted using the guidelines proposed by Petersen et al. We pose three sets of research questions. We define selection and exclusion criteria. From the initial pool of 230 articles, published in years 1991–2011, our final pool consisted of 136 articles. We systematically develop a classification scheme and map the selected articles to this scheme.ResultsWe present two types of results. First, we report the demographics and bibliometrics trends in this domain, including: top-cited articles, active researchers, top venues, and active countries in this research area. Moreover, we derive the trends, for instance, in terms of types of articles, sources of information to derive test cases, types of evaluations used in articles, etc. Our second major result is a publicly-accessible repository that contains all our mapping data. We plan to update this repository on a regular basis, making it a “live” resource for all researchers.ConclusionOur SM provides an overview of existing GUI testing approaches and helps spot areas in the field that require more attention from the research community. For example, much work is needed to connect academic model-based techniques with commercially available tools. To this end, studies are needed to compare the state-of-the-art in GUI testing in academic techniques and industrial tools.     

Blockchain from the information systems perspective: Literature review,synthesis, and directions for future research

This paper profiled blockchain studies in information systems (IS) journals from 2016 to 2022. Drawing on the 443 selected articles from 77 IS journals, we proposed a classification scheme from the IS perspective. Current blockchain articles are highly skewed, focusing on research agendas and system design. We proposed a theoretical framework by summarizing the current status of the blockchain literature and highlighting 15 future research questions for the IS research community. We are optimistic that the proposed framework and future research questions can guide blockchain research and advance its scale and impact.     

基于稀疏表示及正则约束的图像去噪方法综述

数据去噪声是信号和图像处理领域的一个经典问题,广泛应用于各类工程实践中。由于噪声源的多样性,去噪一直是富有挑战性且十分活跃的研究课题,发展了多种经典去噪方法。近年来,随着压缩感知理论的发展,基于稀疏表示及正则化约束反问题求解方法成为图像去噪领域的重要发展方向和技术途径。本文首先回顾和总结图像噪声的来源和类型,然后针对不同类型的图像噪声,重点围绕基于稀疏表示及正则化约束的图像去噪技术进行全面综述,分析和描述了几种主要去噪方法的原理及优缺点。最后,对去噪算法的性能评价指标进行总结。     

A paradigmatic and methodological examination of information systems research from 1991 to 2001

Abstract. The field of information systems (IS) has evolved for more than three decades. Although many schools of thought have emerged and even become well established, few historical analyses of research paradigms and methodologies have been undertaken. One of the rare exceptions is Orlikowski & Baroudi (1991). Yet, the IS research community has evolved substantially since 1991 in many aspects. A variety of journal outlets have emerged and become well established. More attention has been paid to paradigmatic and methodological issues. Political and professional contexts have also changed noticeably. Therefore, it should be an opportune time for the field to ask: ‘What changes are manifested in journal publications?’‘Is the field making progress regarding pluralism in IS research?’‘How will the field's publications practices change in the future?’ The purpose of this paper is to investigate these questions and, in turn, reflect on the paradigmatic and methodological progress made since 1991. We examined 1893 articles published in eight major IS publication outlets between 1991 and 2001. Our findings suggest that the long‐term endeavours of interpretivist researchers might need to continue because the paradigmatic progress appears somewhat inconsequential; positivist research still dominates 81% of published empirical research. In particular, US journals, as opposed to European journals, tend to be more positivist, quantitative, cross‐sectional and survey oriented. With respect to research design, survey research is still the most widely used method (41%), although case studies have gained substantial recognition (36%). Further, the increase of qualitative research (30%), empirical studies (61%) and longitudinal cases (33%) at the expense of laboratory experiments (18%) might suggest that IS researchers have become more interested in obtaining scientific knowledge in real world settings. In summary, we suggest that the field has been dominated by the positivist paradigm, despite calls to the contrary. Indeed, if the field was to truly embrace pluralism, it would have to find ways to fundamentally change the publication practices of the journal system, including the current tenure and promotion system, which pose considerable obstacles for the acceptance of alternative paradigms.     

Understanding replication of experiments in software engineering: A classification

ContextReplication plays an important role in experimental disciplines. There are still many uncertainties about how to proceed with replications of SE experiments. Should replicators reuse the baseline experiment materials? How much liaison should there be among the original and replicating experimenters, if any? What elements of the experimental configuration can be changed for the experiment to be considered a replication rather than a new experiment?ObjectiveTo improve our understanding of SE experiment replication, in this work we propose a classification which is intend to provide experimenters with guidance about what types of replication they can perform.MethodThe research approach followed is structured according to the following activities: (1) a literature review of experiment replication in SE and in other disciplines, (2) identification of typical elements that compose an experimental configuration, (3) identification of different replications purposes and (4) development of a classification of experiment replications for SE.ResultsWe propose a classification of replications which provides experimenters in SE with guidance about what changes can they make in a replication and, based on these, what verification purposes such a replication can serve. The proposed classification helped to accommodate opposing views within a broader framework, it is capable of accounting for less similar replications to more similar ones regarding the baseline experiment.ConclusionThe aim of replication is to verify results, but different types of replication serve special verification purposes and afford different degrees of change. Each replication type helps to discover particular experimental conditions that might influence the results. The proposed classification can be used to identify changes in a replication and, based on these, understand the level of verification.