The body of literature addressing the phenomenon related to social networking services (SNSs) has grown rather fast recently. Through a systematic and quantitative approach, this study identifies the ...recent SNS research themes, which are the issues discussed by a coherent and growing subset of this literature. A set of academic articles retrieved from the Web of Science database is used as the basis for uncovering the recent themes. We begin the analysis by constructing a citation network which is further separated into groups after applying a widely used clustering method. The resulting clusters all consist of articles coherent in citation relationships. This study suggests eight fast growing recent themes. They span widely encompassing politics, romantic relationships, public relations, journalism, and health. Among them, four focus their issues largely on Twitter, three on Facebook, and one generally on both. While discussions on traditional issues in SNSs such as personality, motivations, self-disclosure, narcissism, etc. continue to lead the pack, the proliferation of the highlighted recent themes in the near future is very likely to happen.
Research activities relating to data envelopment analysis (DEA) have grown at a fast rate recently. Exactly what activities have been carrying the research momentum forward is a question of ...particular interest to the research community. The purpose of this study is to find these research activities, or research fronts, in DEA. A research front refers to a coherent topic or issue addressed by a group of research articles in recent years. The large amount of DEA literature makes it difficult to use any traditional qualitative methodology to sort out the matter. Thus, this study applies a network clustering method to group the literature through a citation network established from the DEA literature over the period 2000 to 2014. The keywords of the articles in each discovered group help pinpoint its research focus. The four research fronts identified are “bootstrapping and two-stage analysis”, “undesirable factors”, “cross-efficiency and ranking”, and “network DEA, dynamic DEA, and SBM”. Each research front is then examined with key-route main path analysis to uncover the elements in its core. In addition to presenting the research fronts, this study also updates the main paths and author statistics of DEA development since its inception and compares them with those reported in a previous study.
•This study presents research fronts in DEA in the period 2000-2014.•These research fronts include two-stage analysis, undesirable factors, cross-efficiency, and network DEA.•The growth of the network DEA subarea shows a surge in the period 2008-2012.•This study also updates the main paths and author statistics of DEA development since its inception.
A survey of DEA applications Liu, John S.; Lu, Louis Y.Y.; Lu, Wen-Min ...
Omega (Oxford),
10/2013, Letnik:
41, Številka:
5
Journal Article
Recenzirano
The literature of data envelopment analysis (DEA) encompasses many surveys, yet all either emphasize methodologies or do not make a distinction between methodological and application papers. This ...study is the first literature survey that focuses on DEA applications, covering DEA papers published in journals indexed by the Web of Science database from 1978 through August 2010. The results show that on the whole around two-thirds (63.6%) of DEA papers embed empirical data, while the remaining one-third are purely-methodological. Purely-methodological articles dominated the first 20 years of DEA development, but the accumulated number of application-embedded papers caught up to purely-methodological papers in 1999. Among the multifaceted applications, the top-five industries addressed are: banking, health care, agriculture and farm, transportation, and education. The applications that have the highest growth momentum recently are energy and environment as well as finance. In addition to the basic statistics, we uncover the development trajectory in each application area through the main path analysis. An observation from these works suggests that the two-step contextual analysis and network DEA are the recent trends across applications and that the two-step contextual analysis is the prevailing approach.
► We survey systematically DEA applications from 1978 through August 2010. ► Two-thirds of DEA papers embed application data and one-third is purely-methodological. ► Top-5 applications: banking, health care, agriculture and farm, transportation, education. ► Find no obvious methodological preferences for each of the five major applications. ► Two-step contextual analysis and network DEA are the recent trends across applications.
This study surveys the data envelopment analysis (DEA) literature by applying a citation-based approach. The main goals are to find a set of papers playing the central role in DEA development and to ...discover the latest active DEA subareas. A directional network is constructed based on citation relationships among academic papers. After assigning an importance index to each link in the citation network, main DEA development paths emerge. We examine various types of main paths, including local main path, global main path, and multiple main paths. The analysis result suggests, as expected, that Charnes et al. (1978) Charnes A, Cooper WW, Rhodes E. Measuring the efficiency of decision making units. European Journal of Operational Research 1978; 2(6): 429–444 is the most influential DEA paper. The five most active DEA subareas in recent years are identified; among them the “two-stage contextual factor evaluation framework” is relatively more active. Aside from the main path analysis, we summarize basic statistics on DEA journals and researchers. A growth curve analysis hints that the DEA literature’s size will eventually grow to at least double the size of the existing literature.
A few notes on main path analysis Liu, John S.; Lu, Louis Y. Y.; Ho, Mei Hsiu-Ching
Scientometrics,
15/4, Letnik:
119, Številka:
1
Journal Article
Recenzirano
The last few years have seen a growing interest in main path analysis among scholars across a wide spectrum of disciplines. Hummon and Doreian first introduced this method, and it has since become an ...effective technique for mapping technological trajectories, exploring scientific knowledge flows, and conducting literature reviews. Nevertheless, there are issues not broadly discussed in applying the method, including the handling of citation data, choosing a proper traversal weight scheme, search options, and interpretation of the resulting paths. This note aims to deepen the discussions and concludes with several suggestions and strategies in applying main path analysis.
The recent shift from buying products to purchasing sets of services makes the re-use of recovered materials, parts and products desirable. In response to heightened governmental regulations and ...rising public awareness of the effect of industrial production on the environment, many organizations are now undertaking major initiatives to transform their supply chain processes. In contrast with the reverse logistic models, the green supply chain (GSC) is a broad concept that refers to a variety of methods by which companies work with their suppliers to improve the environmental performance of their products or manufacturing processes of the suppliers, customers or both. Two primary goals of GSC include: (1) consistently meeting specified environmental performance criteria among the participants in the supply chain, and promoting responsible corporate environmental behaviour among all the players in the chain of products and services, and (2) helping suppliers to recognize the importance of resolving environmental issues and support them in installing their own improvement initiatives. The emergence of GSC is one of the most significant environmental developments in the past decade, offering the opportunity for companies to align their supply chains in accordance with environmental and sustainability goals. GSC provides information and technical assistance to small- and medium-sized businesses that lack the resources of large companies, and can monitor and measure progress to facilitate environmental enhancement. The number of products produced entirely of recyclable materials will increase in the future, and organizations will have to make supply chain decisions within the context of growing environmental concerns and responsibilities. This study presents an innovative method using simple and efficient procedures to evaluate the effectiveness of projects supplying GSC concept. Specifically, a multi-objective decision making process for GSC management (GSCM) is presented to help the supply chain manager in measuring and evaluating suppliers' performance based on an analytical hierarchy process (AHP) decision-making method. In addition, to reduce subjective bias in designing a weighting system, a fuzzy logic process is used to modify the AHP.
Fuel cell technologies have long been recognized as one of the most promising future energy solutions. Nevertheless, major technological barriers hinder the potential realization of this clean energy ...source. Citation network analysis methodology is used here to identify major research trends, critical technological issues, and proposed resolutions to raise the effectiveness of investment of R&D resources in fuel cell technology development.
The main path analyses identify two research streams for the Proton-Exchange Membrane Fuel Cell (PEMFC) and Direct Methanol Fuel Cell (DMFC) technologies. Analyses of cited publications show that most of the technological barriers for PEMFC have been addressed and that performance has reached an acceptable level. On the other hand, DMFC still suffers from methanol and water crossover problems. Multiple main path analysis identifies specific research groups working on technological problems in DMFC. The Direct Formic Acid Fuel Cell (DFAFC) and Direct Ethanol Fuel Cell (DEFC) have recently emerged to address the toxicity of methanol, while DMFC performance is being enhanced through research on porous carbon plates, water transportation, and methanol concentrations, and the research group at Micro DMFC is applying fuel cells in electronics devices. Despite considerable research on Solid Oxide Fuel Cell (SOFC), its research stream does not appear in the main paths, most likely because of a broad divergence in research subjects. Growth curve analysis forecasts that fuel cell research is in the growth stage and will enter maturity in 2018. Although emerging technologies show advantages in performance and cost, the findings presented here can raise the effectiveness of critical research project selection, thus increasing the likelihood of success.
•Citation network analysis is applied to explore technological barriers to fuel cell development.•Major technological barriers to PEMFC have been addressed.•DMFC still suffers from methanol and water crossover problems.•SOFC is emerging and its research streams have not clearly formed.•Growth curve shows that fuel cell research will enter maturity stage in 2018.
Medical tourism, combining the very polarized purposes of pleasurable travel and potentially stressful health care services, is an emergent and growing business worldwide. Medical tourism patients ...are willing to travel abroad to seek better quality, lower cost, domestically unavailable, no wait-time destinations for non-emergency medical care. There are numerous related studies in the academic literature that are substantiated with multidisciplinary and diverse backgrounds. This study uses the main path analysis, a unique quantitative and citation-based approach, to analyze the significant development trajectories, important literature, and recent active research areas in medical tourism. We find that there are two distinctive development paths: one path focuses more on the evolution of medical tourism, the motivation factors, marketing strategies, and economic analysis; the other path emphasizes organ transplant and related issues. These two paths eventually merge to a common node in the citation network, which foretells transplantation to beautification as the future research direction trend.
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•We collect and analyze 392 medical tourism related academic papers.•The main path analysis reveals two major medical tourism research streams.•Ethics and risks related to organ transplantation are largely discussed.•Economic and marketing issues need more discussion.•Beautification appears to be the potential growing segment.
The present share of new energy vehicles (NEVs) in the global automobile market is less than 1%. To understand why, we reviewed the body of literature on this topic, to identify the developmental ...trends of NEVs. Unlike previous reviews, which have mainly focused on a singular topic (e.g., charging, policies, etc.), we used main path analysis (MPA) to analyze a citation network of the literature on NEVs in the field of economic management. Our goals were to identify developmental trajectories and explore the major research topics of NEVs. A search of the Web of Science database identified 801 NEV-themed articles. Analyses of these studies indicate the following. First, endurance mileage was a key factor restricting the penetration of the new energy market by NEVs before 2013, and the charging problem gradually became the key factor after 2013. Second, the technological development of NEVs is locked to some extent onto the technology of the internal-combustion engine. Third, more innovative vehicles are the future of NEVs. This paper presents some feasible solutions to the charging problem and call for more attention to be placed on the influence of the intelligent attributes of NEVs which may drive the future developmental trend.
•801 articles about new energy vehicles (NEVs) are analyzed.•The overall main path centers on the factors influencing NEV market penetration.•Charging issues became the key factor restricting NEV penetration after 2013.•Expansion of the intelligent attributes of NEVs will drive the future trend.
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