bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Offshoring Entertainment and Media to India
Authors: Schwender Alyssa D. , Leet Christopher J.M.
Published: February 2011

This chapter explores opportunities for the offshoring of assorted processes in the global entertainment and media industry. Currently, this industry is experiencing incredible growth, much of it spurred by the increased digitalization of media production around the world. The rise of digital technology, faster global connectivity, an increased quality of downloads have been the driving factors behind this growth. The filmed entertainment, recorded music, and television networks and distribution sectors of the industry will undergo major technological changes in the coming years. These changes will provide opportunities for entrepreneurs to enter the global media industry. Using venture funding, startups are utilizing offshoring concepts to create a more efficient cost-effective means of doing business. The Asia Pacific market is currently the fastest-growing region, with India leading the way with offshoring of film functions. The industry will see a change from large media conglomerates as the sole owners of all media to smaller companies offering services, in which they specialize, to these larger companies, as digital media makes it easily accessible around the globe.
A Paradigmatic and Methodological Review of Research in Outsourcing
Authors: Yadav Vanita , Gupta Rajen K.
Published: February 2011

Due to the growing academic and practitioner interest in the field of outsourcing, there is a need to do a comprehensive assessment and synthesis of research activities to date. This chapter addresses this need and examines the academic literature on information systems outsourcing and business process outsourcing using a paradigmatic and methodological lens. The objective of this chapter is fourfold. Firstly, it examines the status of outsourcing research from 1995 to 2005 in eight leading academic journals, to compare the current research trends with past research directions in terms of methodologies applied. Secondly, it analyzes the research paradigms adopted in these research papers using the Operations Research Paradigm framework. Thirdly, it compares and contrasts the outsourcing research work published in three leading European journals with the work published in three leading American journals. Finally, it uncovers the implications of this study and the directions for future research.
Subgroup Biases in Partially-Distributed Collaboration
Authors: Bos Nathan , Olson Judith S. , Nan Ning , cheshin Arik
Published: February 2011

Modern organizations often bring together groups in which some people are collocated and some remote. These groups often take the form of loosely-organized networks rather than hierarchies. Partially distributed groups may have characteristics that are different from fully collocated or fully distributed groups, such as being particularly vulnerable to subgroup formation. A ten-person simulation game called Shape Factory was used to model partially-distributed collaboration networks. We found that biases in trade patterns did occur among both collocated and remote (isolated) players. Collocated players formed a strong subgroup, with a bias toward ingroup trading, which almost immediately led remote players to form their own subgroup. These groups strengthened over time. Despite being at a technological disadvantage, the remote group performed as collocated workers.
A Distributed Dynamic Channel Allocation Scheme in Cellular Communication Networks
Authors: Al-Bahadili Hussein , Mallouh Arafat Abu
Published: February 2011

This article presents a description and performance evaluation of an efficient distributed dynamic channels allocation (DDCA) scheme, which can be used for channel allocation in cellular communication networks (CCNs), such as the global system for mobile communication (GSM). The scheme utilizes a well-known distributed artificial intelligence (DAI) algorithm, namely, the asynchronous weak-commitment (AWC) algorithm, in which a complete solution is established by extensive communication among a group of neighbouring collaborative cells forming a pattern, where each cell in the pattern uses a unique set of channels. To minimize communication overhead among cells, a token-based mechanism was introduced. The scheme achieved excellent average allocation efficiencies of over 85% for a number of simulations.
Governing Information Technology (IT) and Security Vulnerabilities
Authors: El Sheikh Asim , Khadra Husam A. Abu
Published: February 2011

The aims of this study is to evaluate information technology (IT) governance implementation using the COBiTs’ maturity model, investigate the perceived Security Threats that face these companies and measures the causality between them. An Empirical Survey using self-administered questionnaire has been carried out to achieve the study objectives. The study results reveal that Jordanian industrial companies did not apply IT governance in its comprehensive methodology despite the implementation of some of its aspects .The study main recommendation for the industrial companies that it should give more attention to IT governance. Industrial companies Professionals should work more to increase the IT governance strength for all of its dimensions especially with the existence of negative causality relation between the IT governance and security threats frequencies.
Role of Wireless Grids in Outsourcing and Offshoring
Authors: Agarwal Ashish , Gupta Amar
Published: February 2011

The growing incidence of outsourcing and offshoring of professional applications is motivating increasing interest in the use of grid computing and grid topologies for meeting the infrastructure requirements. A Wireless Grid facilitates the exchange of information and the interaction between heterogeneous wireless and wired devices. Depending on the nature of the interactions among the constituencies served by the wireless grid, various layouts can be envisaged to provide ubiquitous services. A wireless grid is similar to the wired grid in terms of its distributed nature, the requirement for standards and protocols, and the need for adequate Quality of Service. In addition, a Wireless Grid has to deal with the complexities of the limited power of the mobile devices, the limited bandwidth, and the increased dynamic nature of the interactions involved. The ability of the grid models to address outsourcing needs is contingent upon the efficient resolution of multiple technical challenges.
Decision Making Concerning the Acquisition and Use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in Medical Practices
Authors: MacGregor R.C. , Hyland P.N. , Harvie C.
Published: February 2011

A number of studies both within medical practices as well as the wider small business sector suggest that gender plays a role in both decision-making and the running of the business. Yet despite these apparent differences, the role of gender in the adoption of ICT in medical practices has remained largely ignored. This paper presents a study of 196 GPs (128 males, 68 females) who have adopted ICT in their practice. The results of this study show that the perception of drivers of ICT adoption and use in medical practices appear to differ depending on the gender of the GP. Where male GPs consider that there are 3 distinct underlying reasons for ICT adoption (medical/ business efficiency, external pressure, enhanced communication), female GPs couple enhanced communication with medical/business efficiency as the single most important driver for ICT adoption.
Embedded Relationships in Information Services
Authors: Jonsson Katrin
Published: February 2011

Information technology (IT) is increasingly used in the production of services, enabling a self serve channel that challenges the embedded relationship in services. To examine the implications of IT for embedded relationships, we undertook an interpretative case study of a remote diagnostics service in the mining industry. Our analysis suggests that the combination of IT and social efforts by the participants can support embedded relationships to a larger extent than has been shown in previous research.
Business Technology Strategy for a
Authors: Wilms Anne , Andriole Stephen J.
Published: February 2011

This paper focuses on the development of a business technology strategy for a large global specialty chemicals company. The requirement was to develop a strategy that aligned with the company’s business strategy, which is not an uncommon requirement for business technology strategies in the 21st century. The expectation was that information technology (IT) would cross the operation-to-strategic chasm and start to generate some significant ROI. The paper explores the elements of the “strategic strategy” (versus an “operational strategy”) as well as ongoing challenges to make both operational and strategic technology work. The authors illustrate a number of strategy development principles that students should internalize as they assess other cases and develop their own business technology strategies.
Business Technology Strategy for an Energy Management Company
Authors: Swimm Nora , Andriole Stephen J.
Published: February 2011

This paper focuses on the development of a business technology strategy for an energy management company. EnDis1 manages the distribution of electric power to a specific geographic region, and is a regional transmission organization (RTO).2 The primary mission of EnDis is reliability and security. The case describes the process of developing a technology strategy for the company recognizing the unique mission the company has in maintaining electric power for their customers.
Application of Evolutionary Algorithms for Humanoid Robot Motion Planning
Authors: Capi G. , Mitobe K.
Published: February 2011

In this article, the authors present a new method for humanoid robot motion planning, satisfying multiple objectives. In this method, the multiple objectives humanoid robot motion is formulated as a multiobjective optimization problem, considering each objective as a separate fitness function. Three different objectives are considered: (1) minimum energy consumption; (2) stability; and (3) walking speed. The advantage of the proposed method is that, in a single run of multiobjective evolution, generated humanoid robot motions satisfy each objective separately or multiple objectives simultaneously. Therefore, the humanoid robot can switch between different gaits based on environmental conditions. The results show that humanoid robot gaits generated by multiobjective evolution are similar to that of humans. To further verify the performance of optimal motions, they are transferred to the “Bonten-Maru” humanoid robot.
Development of a Knowledge Based System for an Intensive Care Environment Using Ontologies
Authors: Morgade Ana Torres , Martínez-Romero Marcos , Vázquez-Naya José M. , Loureiro Miguel Pereira , Albo Ángel González , Loureiro Javier Pereira
Published: February 2011

In intensive care units (ICUs), clinicians must monitor patients’ vital signs and make decisions regarding the drugs they administer. The patients’ lives depend on the quality of these decisions but experts can make mistakes. Recent technological strategies and tools can decrease these errors. In this paper, the authors describe the development of a knowledge based system (KBS) to provide support to clinicians with respect to the drugs they administer to patients with cardiopathies in ICUs to stabilize them. To develop the system, knowledge from medical experts at the Meixoeiro Hospital in Vigo (Spain) has been extracted and formally represented as an ontology. As a result, a validated KBS has been obtained, which can be helpful to experts in ICUs and whose underlying knowledge can be easily shared and reused.
Toward an Interdisciplinary Engineering and Management of Complex IT-Intensive Organizational Systems
Authors: Mora Manuel , Gelman Ovsei , Frank Moti , Paradice David B. , Cervantes Francisco , Forgionne Guisseppi A.
Published: February 2011

An accelerated scientific, engineering, and industrial progress in information technologies has fostered the deployment of Complex Information Technology (highly dependent) Organizational Systems (CITOS). The benefits have been so strong that CITOS have proliferated in a variety of large and midsized organizations to support various generic intra-organizational processes and inter-organizational activities. But their systems engineering, management, and research complexity have been substantially raised in the last decade, and the CITOS realization is presenting new technical, organizational, management, and research challenges. In this article, we use a conceptual research method to review the engineering, management, and research complexity issues raised for CITOS, and develop the rationality of the following propositions: P1: a plausible response to cope with CITOS is an interdisciplinary engineering and management body of knowledge; and P2: such a realization is plausible through the incorporation of foundations, principles, methods, tools, and best practices from the systems approach by way of systems engineering and software engineering disciplines. Discussion of first benefits, critical barriers, and effectiveness measures to reach this academic proposal are presented.
Do We Mean Information Systems or Systems of Information?
Authors: Stowell Frank
Published: February 2011

This article raises questions about the nature of information systems and the way they are designed and developed, and suggests areas where IS researchers may wish to investigate. I raise the issue whether the domain of information systems should be thought of in terms of systems of information rather than through the mnemonic IS which might help highlight wider considerations. In the article, four questions are raised, deemed as appropriate to information systems research. These questions are about the nature of IS, design methods, the underpinning philosophy, and IS failure. By raising these four areas of concern in this article, the intention is to stimulate debate rather than provide answers.
Information-As-System in Information Systems
Authors: Nguyen Tuan M. , Vo Huy V.
Published: February 2011

This article investigates the complex nature of information in information systems (IS). Based on the systems thinking framework, this study argues that information in IS is a system in its own right. A conceptual model of information-as-system is built on the systems thinking perspective adopted from Gharajedaghi’s holistic thinking rooted from Ackoff systems approach, which is developed through Peirce’s semiotics with the validity support of Metcalfe and Powell’s perspective of information perception, Mingers and Brocklesby’s schema of situational actions, Toulmin’s theory of argumentation and Ulrich’s theory of systems boundary. The proposed model of information-as-systems is described in terms of triads–on the structure, function, and process, all interdependent–in a context of information-as-system in IS.
The Systems View of Information Systems from Professor Steven Alter
Authors: Paradice David
Published: February 2011

IJITSA is pleased to include in this issue an interview with Dr. Steven Alter. Dr. Alter is Professor of Information Systems at the University of San Francisco. He holds a BS in mathematics from MIT and a PhD from MIT’s Sloan School of Management. After teaching at the University of Southern California, he served for eight years as co-founder and Vice President of Consilium, a manufacturing software firm that went public in 1989 and was acquired by Applied Materials in 1998. While at Consilium he started departments for customer service, training, documentation, technical support, and product management. Upon returning to academia, he wrote four editions of an information systems textbook. His latest book is The work system method: Connecting people, processes, and IT for business results. Dr. Alter’s articles have appeared in journals such as Harvard Business Review, Sloan Management Review, MIS Quarterly, IBM Systems Journal, European Journal of Information Systems, Decision Support Systems, Interfaces, Communications of the ACM, Communications of the Association for Information Systems and CIO Insight, and in many conference proceedings.
On Inter-Method and Intra-Method Object-Oriented Class Cohesion
Authors: Tsui Frank , Karam Orlando , Duggins Sheryl , Bonja Challa
Published: February 2011

Cohesion has been a topic of interest since structured design in the 1970’s. Cohesion may also be viewed as a characterization of a system attribute. Today, there are numerous researchers continuing this work into object-oriented designs. Most of the current research has focused on the interaction of methods within a class, the inter-method cohesion. In this paper, we consider both the inter-method cohesion and the intra-method cohesion of a class. We have utilized the concept of program slice (Weiser, 1981) and have extended Functional Cohesion (Bieman & Ott, 1994) to devise a new intra-method cohesion metric, ITRA-C, for measuring cohesion of each method within the class. This intra-method cohesion is based on the notion of effects and chaining in an effect-slice. We further combine the (inter-method, intra-method)-tuple into one combined Class Cohesion, which provides a quick view of bands of cohesion for categorizing classes.
Self-Efficacy in Software Developers
Authors: Mancha Ruben , Hallam Cory , Dietrich Glenn
Published: February 2011

This article applies General System Theory to the formalization of the Cognitive Affective Personality System (CAPS). A model is developed as means for understanding the relationships between widely studied constructs at the individual level of analysis: personality traits, affectivity, self-efficacy, intrinsic task complexity, and managerial empowerment, among others. The resulting theoretical framework is formalized within the setting of software development tasks, and qualitatively studied to show holistic emergent behavior. The discussion offers novel insights for future research and proposes quantitative analyses methods to unlock novel management strategies and productivity gains.
OSTRA
Authors: Tiba Fabiano , Wang Shuying , Ramanujam Sunitha , Capretz Miriam A.M.
Published: February 2011

Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) is an emerging paradigm that entails building applications as a collection of flexible services. Although there is a considerable amount of research on the challenges involving the transition to SOA, it is still necessary to incorporate frameworks that provide guidance for companies adopting this architecture. Accordingly, this article presents a framework, which is entitled OSTRA (Opportunity-driven Service-oriented TRAnsition). OSTRA provides a realistic approach for the development of SOA by considering short-term and long-term term goals as well as by balancing planning and management. This work describes the three streams that OSTRA organizes throughout the SOA transition: SOA roadmap, SOA development and SOA governance. Moreover, it discusses the implementation of OSTRA in a real organization.
Software Development Life Cycles and Methodologies
Authors: Conger Sue
Published: February 2011

Information Systems as a discipline has generated thousands of research papers, yet the practice still suffers from poor-quality applications. This paper evaluates the current state of application development, finding practice wanting in a number of areas. Changes recommended to fix historical shortcomings include improved management attention to risk management, testing, and detailed work practices. In addition, for industry’s move to services orientation, recommended changes include development of usable interfaces and a view of applications as embedded in the larger business services in which they function. These business services relate to both services provided to parent-organization customers as well as services provided by the information technology organization to its constituents. Because of this shift toward service orientation, more emphasis on usability, applications, testing, and improvement of underlying process quality are needed. The shift to services can be facilitated by adopting tenets of IT service management and user-centered design and by attending to service delivery during application development.
When Is Standardization Slow?
Authors: Sherif M. H.
Published: February 2011

This paper presents an analysis of the political, marketing, and technical aspects associated with the perception that standarization is slow. A framework is defined to evaluate the rate of standarization in terms of meeting users’ needs.
Tightrope Walking
Authors: Ellingsen Gunnar
Published: February 2011

Traditionally, uniform and standardised IT-solutions in health care are considered mechanisms for increased control, efficiency and quality. Unfortunately, in spite of existing studies of the actual experiences of standardisation, such as how they come into being, and how they are intertwined with local practice, unreasonable belief in standardisation seems to prevail. Acknowledging the origin of standardisation and its local character, however, does not mean that standardisation is futile or should be avoided. It rather means that standardisation efforts should balance the management level’s need for increased coordination and control, and the local level’s need for flexibility. The aim of this paper is to strike this balance as it elaborates the implications and the ‘costs’ for local practice in order to make a standard work. Empirically, the paper draws on a standardisation effort of discharge letter production in the University Hospital of Northern Norway.
Unified Citation Management and Visualization Using Open Standards
Authors: Ginsburg Mark
Published: February 2011

Scientific research is hindered when there are artificial barriers preventing efficient and straightforward sharing of bibliographic information. In today’s computing world, the barriers take the form of incompatible bibliographic formats and constraining operating system and vendor dependencies. These incompatible platforms isolate the respective camps. In this paper, we demonstrate and discuss a new approach to unify citation management, called the Open Citation System (OCS). OCS uses open XML standards and Java component technologies. By providing converter tools to migrate citations to a centralized ”hub” in BiblioML format (an XML tag set based on the UniMARC standard), we then make use of XML Topic Maps to provide an extensible framework for visualization. We take as an example the ACM Classification Code and show how the OCS system displays citations in a convenient focus + context hyperbolic tree interface. We conclude by discussing future directions planned to extend the OCS system and how open citation management can supply an important piece in our inexorable march towards a worldwide digital library.
Standardization and Other Coordination Mechanisms in Open Source Software
Authors: Egyedi Tineke M. , van Wendel de Joode Ruben
Published: February 2011

Open Source Software (OSS) offers programmers the opportunity to elaborate and adapt source code. It is an opportunity to diverge. We would therefore expect incompatible strains of software to develop, and consequently a demand for standardization to arise. However, this is only partly the case. In this paper we explore which other coordinative mechanisms are at work apart from committee standardization. We identify four other categories of coordinative mechanisms, and illustrate their relevance in OSS development. They complement committee standardization, can be used in standardization, and are sometimes an alternative to standardization.
Lessons from the Past
Authors: Blum Ulrich
Published: February 2011

This study considers the developments in international standardization over the last 20 years, particularly the status of public standardization as compared with consortium-based industrial standardization. The report shows that the radical reform of the global public standardization system in 2008, prompted by the loss of interest in public standardization on the part of large corporations and the sometimes less-than-satisfactory outcomes from consortium-based industrial standardization in terms of competition and antitrust considerations, has helped to compensate for the declining significance of national public standardization, particularly for national governments, and is to be regarded as a clearly positive development, from both the economic and the institutional and political points of view. Global public interests are now catered for by Internet-supported information markets; in particular, online documentation has also enhanced the transparency of the public standardization process and provided freedom of access for small- and medium-sized companies in particular, irrespective of geographical region. Finally, the study shows that the debate that took place in and around the year 2004 between Europe and the USA regarding the path towards the internationalization of public standardization processes was superfluous, incomplete and even counterproductive, owing to the hardening of the political divisions between the two sides.
Developing Country Perspectives Software
Authors: Shen Xiaobai
Published: February 2011

This paper looks at implications of the emerging global Intellectual Property (IP) regime for Developing Countries (DCs) and their attempts to improve their technological capabilities. It further highlights the new perspectives for DCs opened up by the emergence of non-proprietary (open source/free) software, such as Linux. A case study of the battle between Microsoft and Linux in China is used to explore the dilemmas faced by China in determining what IP regime (strict or weak) to adopt, and the threats and opportunities that either may pose for indigenous technology development. Based on the case analysis, the paper criticizes the simplistic polarized views that have been presented of the implications of the global IP regime and of the potential of non-proprietary software. It explores some of the complex considerations about the interplay between technology strategy and IP protection for China and discusses the policy implications for China and other DCs.
x
Authors: Wustner Erik , Buxmann Peter , Schade Sven
Published: February 2011

This paper examines how open standards and open source software can serve as a basis for developing modern solutions for electronic data interchange (EDI). In recent years, various XML vocabularies for defining business documents (e.g., invoices and purchase orders) have emerged. In many cases, the involved business partners cannot agree on a jointly used standard, because their individual requirements for the standards content and syntax differ considerably. This problem can be solved by conversions between the individual formats. This paper presents a Web service called , which is capable of performing such conversions by applying XSLT stylesheets. In addition, an overview of typical conversion problems that occur in XML business documents is given.
PLIB Ontology
Authors: Aklouf Youcef , Pierra Guy , Ait Ameur Yamine , Drias Habiba
Published: February 2011

This paper deals with the integration of PLIB ontologies in electronic commerce architectures, especially in B2B electronic commerce. Exchange of data, information, and knowledge is the key issue. To ensure reliability and feasibility of such exchange, two kinds of ontologies prove useful. One addresses products and services characterization, whereas the other addresses business processes. This paper aims to demonstrate the capability of integration of these two kinds of ontologies in a unique and global B2B-layered architecture. The orthogonality principle is applied. It allows the use of any best existing standard in both business layer and contents layer. In this paper, we use RosettaNet PIPs and ebXML in the business process layer, and we claim that PLIB ontologies are the best-in-class solution for the contents layer. These standards are used conjointly to promote interoperability and automation between partners involved in exchange. The originality of our approach is the possibility offered to the partners to use any defined business process with any defined content. A case study showing an application of such ontologies using RosettaNet PIP2A9 for business process and PLIB-based ontology for product characterization is presented. Implementation issues are also discussed.
The Emerging ISO10303 Modular Architecture
Authors: Jardim-Gocalves Ricardo , Olavo Ricardo , Steiger-Garcao Adolfo
Published: February 2011

ISO10303 STEP (STandard for the Exchange of Product model data) released a suite of application protocols covering the most important product life-cycle activities. The maturity in the development and usage of these standard models was conducted to the redesign of the classical architecture of STEP application protocols to a more agile architecture in order to better fit the emergent technologies and facilitate the understanding, development, reuse, and implementation of normalized reference product data models. This paper introduces the new modular architecture of ISO10303, comparing it with the classic architecture of STEP. Then, it describes the structure of the new modular AP236, concluding with a proposal for a graphical framework for the design and development of normalized modules and new modular application protocols.
Open Standards Requirements
Authors: Krechmer Ken
Published: February 2011

An open society, if it utilizes communications systems, requires open standards. The personal computer revolution and the Internet have resulted in a vast new wave of Internet users. These new users have a material interest in the technical standards that proscribe their communications. These new users make new demands on the standardization processes, often with the rallying cry, “Open Standards.” As is often the case, a rallying cry means many different things to different people. This article explores the different requirements suggested by the term Open Standards. Perhaps when everyone agrees on what requirements open standards serve, it will be possible to achieve them and maintain the open society that many crave.
Best Practice in Company Standardization
Authors: de Vries Henk J. , Slob Florens J.C. , Zuid-Holland Van Gansewinkel
Published: February 2011

This article describes a best practice model for standardization within companies, based on a process approach to the development of company standards. Per process, a best practice is developed based on an investigation within six multinational companies and a review of literature, if any. The findings are benchmarked against experiences in three comparable fields: IT management, quality management, and knowledge management. Though the number of company standards exceeds by far the number of external standards, they have been neglected in standardization research. The authors hope that standards practitioners will benefit from their study and that it will stimulate researchers to pay more attention to this topic.
Linguistic Qualities of International Standards
Authors: Teichmann Hans , de Vries Henk J. , Feilzer Albert J.
Published: February 2011

Linguistic qualities are essential for the use of every standard. The intentions of the standards developers should become perfectly clear to those who will finally use the documents, but language barriers at several project stages may hinder this. This article addresses the topic for standards at the global and regional levels. Most IEC standards are bilingual (English and French) and frequently are translated into national languages. Feedback on standards use, translation practices, and user satisfaction has been obtained by means of two questionnaires sent to the IEC National Committees (NCs). These data are assessed with respect to the language skills of the technical experts concerned; to the particular linguistic aspects of the standards, the process of standards development, and national translating practices; and to standards user satisfaction. Standards development in two languages adds to their fitness for use, but this advantage should be balanced against the cost of bilingualism. The current practice satisfies more or less all parties involved; nevertheless, some improvements can be suggested. The issue of bilingualism vs. unilingualism also has an important cultural/political dimension.
Patents and Standards in the ICT Sector
Authors: Winn Jane K.
Published: February 2011

This article examines the role of law reform in promoting the development of technical standards for the authentication of parties engaged in Internet commerce. Law reforms intended to improve the security of Internet commerce can only succeed if they address business, technical and legal issues simultaneously. The EU has used commercial law reform and formal standard development to coordinate work on authentication standards, while the U.S. has allowed the market to determine what type of authentication technology is appropriate and has left the development of standards to private consortia. While the EU approach may solve collective action problems more effectively, the U.S. approach may discover end user requirements and may allow business judgments about risk to inform the law more effectively. Neither approach has yet resolved the authentication problems facing businesses engaged in online commerce.
Education for IT Service Management Standards
Authors: Cater-Steel Aileen , Toleman Mark
Published: February 2011

Service management standards such as the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL), and now ISO/IEC 20000, provide guidance and tools for the effective management and control of IT service delivery. These standards are of increasing importance to organizations around the globe. Education about these standards and possibilities for training IT staff are, therefore, important. Universities have a place in this education process; however, academics have not embraced these standards in either research or education about them. Regardless, demand grows for IT staff qualified at various levels, particularly on basic or foundational levels, in these standards. This article considers the training offered and the requirement for education related to IT service management. Benefits to universities, graduates, and industry are numerous including increases in student numbers, enhanced employment options for graduates, and improved IT service quality, but there are challenges too, in particular, how to effectively transfer the knowledge to students who have not experienced the IT service environment firsthand.
A Framework to Build Process Theories of Anticipatory Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Standardizing
Authors: Lyytinen Kalle , Keil Thomas , Fomin Vladislav
Published: February 2011

Standards have become critical to information and communication technologies (ICTs) as they become complex and pervasive. We propose a process theory framework to explain anticipatory standardizing outcomes post hoc when the standardizing process is viewed as networks of events. Anticipatory standards define future capabilities for ICT ex ante in contrast to ex post standardizing existing practices or capabilities through de facto standardization in the market. The theoretical framework offers the following: a) a lexicon in the form of the ontology and typology of standardizing events; b) a grammar, or a set of combination rules, for standardizing events to build process representations; c) an analysis and appreciation of contexts in which standardizing unfolds; and d) logic yielding theoretical explanations of standardizing outcomes based on the analysis of process representations. We show how the framework can help analyze standardization data as networks of events as well as explain standardizing outcomes. We illustrate the plausibility of the approach by applying it to wireless standardization to explain standardizing outcomes.
Standards, Patents and Mobile Phones
Authors: Bekkers Rudi , West Joel
Published: February 2011

The impact of patents and patent royalties are a major concern of standards setting organisations. Here we examine the patents filed in the UMTS 3rd generation mobile phone standard, governed by the ETSI IPR policy in response to patent issues faced during the earlier GSM standardization. We contrast firm strategies and policy effectiveness between the GSM and UTMS efforts, and review the potential impact of potential changes to the ETSI IPR policy.
The Work of an International Standardization Consortia
Authors: Grotnes Endre
Published: February 2011

This article gives an account of the Open Mobile Alliance (OMA), a standardization consortium. OMA incorporates actors both from the telecommunication and IT sector. The two sectors have different standardization traditions. OMA could have chosen a multitude of setups and work procedures, but ended up with a traditional organization with technical plenary and work groups, and a consensus oriented work style. Why did OMA chose to organize itself this way? The article argues that this is due to the legacy of the organization and its members, the interconnectedness and systemic nature of the infrastructure, and the overall structure and spirit of the telecommunication field. The article also argues that the whish for legitimacy steers the organization towards its current structure, and alternative organizational forms that are less open and inclusive could create IPR licensing problems, and reduce the perceived legitimacy of the OMA standards.
Formulas for Fair, Reasonable and Non-Discriminatory Royalty Determination
Authors: Salant David J.
Published: February 2011

This article takes an axiomatic approach to determining “Fair, Reasonable, and Non-Discriminatory” (“FRAND”) royalties for intellectual property (“IP”) rights. Drawing on the extensive game theory literature on “surplus sharing/cost sharing” problems, I describe specific formulas for determining license fees that can be derived from basic fairness principles. In particular, I describe the Shapley Value, the Proportional Sharing Rule and the Nucleolus. The Proportional Sharing Rule has the advantage that it is the only rule that is invariant to mergers and splitting of the IP owners. I also explain why, at times, there may be no acceptable to solution. Further, I contrast these rules with the Efficient Component Pricing Rule (“ECPR”) suggested by Baumol and Swanson. Unlike, the ECPR, the rules identified in this article can uniquely determine license fees when there is more than one owner of essential IP, and also incorporate various notions of fairness and equity.
Language Selection Policies in International Standardization
Authors: Teichmann Hans , de Vries Henk J.
Published: February 2011

International standards setting organizations have different language selection policies. In this study, the ethnolinguistic background of international standardization is assessed. The language selection policies of regional and of global organizations have, besides their financial aspects, also an important cultural/ political dimension. Language selection concerns both the working language(s) and the language(s) for communicating. The perception of the (then) 65 National Committees (NCs) of the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) has been investigated by means of a questionnaire. The main findings are: a moderate preference for the use of both English and French for the technical work (standards development and publication), and a strong preference for the use of English only for communication. In the perception of the IEC member countries, an organization with this language policy can still be regarded as truly international. Finally, our conclusions regarding language selection policies are presented.
Standards Education Policy Development
Authors: Choi Donggeun , de Vries Henk , Kim Danbee
Published: February 2011

Since the late 1990’s, governments or national standards organizations have started paying increasing attention to standards education in schools and universities. Many of these initiatives were based on their education policies laid down in a national standards strategy. This paper explores the common and different development status of education policy in national standards strategies in twenty countries. As a result, this paper presents some similarities and dissimilarities in the policy. The resemblance of policies might imply that standards education is considered as a common interest. The differences could indicate that the different interests and socio-economic infrastructure per country require differences in standards education strategy. Also, these differences could indicate a lack of recognition about possible policy considerations and ideas. In this case, the policies of some countries could be referred as good practices as to other countries when they develop their national policy or strategy for standards education.
Standardization of Information Technologies in Fundamental Research in Russia
Authors: Gulyaev Yuri , Oleinikov Alexander , Zhuravliov Eugene
Published: February 2011

This article presents the history, current state, and directions of research and implementation of open information system technologies in the Russian Academy of Sciences. Since 1993 when work on the systematized application of open systems principles was initiated by the Russian Academy of Sciences, a number of important results could be achieved. The authors now define directions for the further development of open systems technology - formalization of available approaches, better integration with other IT technologies, and expansion of scope from nanotechnologies up to GRID-technologies.
Concepts and Standardization in Areas Relating to Competence
Authors: Grant Simon , Young Rowin
Published: February 2011

This paper reviews terminology, motivation, history and current work in areas relating to skill or competence. Many useful services, clarifying pathways within and from education to employment, self-assessment, and selection would be facilitated by better standardization of the format in which related definitions are represented, and also by a standard approach to representing the structured sets often called frameworks. To be effective, information models underlying interoperability specifications must be based on common conceptual models; the authors propose one such model as a work in progress. The authors see the way forward as reaching greater consensus about the components of competence, including intended learning outcomes, agreement on a model for frameworks allowing reuse of and comparison between components in and between frameworks, and investigation of how requirements and claims for skill and competence can be coordinated in the light of common practice in recruitment.
A Subspace Clustering Framework for Research Group Collaboration
Authors: Agarwal Nitin , Haque Ehtesham , Liu Huan , Parsons Lance
Published: February 2011

Researchers spend considerable time searching for relevant papers on the topic in which they are currently interested. Often, despite having similar interests, researchers in the same laboratory do not find it convenient to share results of bibliographic searches and thus conduct independent time-consuming searches. Research paper recommender systems can help the researcher avoid such time-consuming searches by allowing each researcher to automatically take advantage of previous searches performed by others in the lab. Existing recommender systems were developed for commercial domains to assist users by focusing toward products of their interests. Unlike those domains, the research paper domain has relatively few users when compared with the significantly larger number of research papers. In this paper, we present a novel system to recommend relevant research papers to a user based on the user’s recent querying and browsing habits. The core of the system is a scalable subspace clustering algorithm, SCuBA (Subspace ClUstering Based Analysis) that performs well on the sparse, high-dimensional data collected in this domain. Both synthetic and benchmark datasets are used to evaluate the recommendation system and to demonstrate that it performs better than the traditional collaborative filtering approaches when recommending research papers.
Engineering Wireless Mobile Applications
Authors: Mahmoud Qusay H. , Maamar Zakaria
Published: February 2011

Conventional desktop software applications are usually designed, built, and tested on a platform similar to the one on which they will be deployed and run. Wireless mobile application development, on the other hand, is more challenging because applications are developed on one platform (like UNIX or Windows) and deployed on a totally different platform like a cellular phone. While wireless applications can be much smaller than conventional desktop applications, developers should think in small terms of the devices on which the applications will run and the environment in which they will operate instead of the amount of code to be written. This paper presents a systematic approach to engineering wireless application and offers practical guidelines for testing them. What is unique about this approach is that it takes into account the special features of the new medium (mobile devices and wireless networks), the operational environment, and the multiplicity of user backgrounds; all of which pose new challenges to wireless application development.
Agile Development of Secure Web-Based Applications
Authors: Tappenden A. F. , Huynh T. , Miller J. , Geras A. , Smith M.
Published: February 2011

This article outlines a four-point strategy for the development of secure Web-based applications within an agile development framework and introduces strategies to mitigate security risks commonly present in Web-based applications. The proposed strategy includes the representation of security requirements as test cases supported by the open source tool FIT, the deployment of a highly testable architecture allowing for security testing of the application at all levels, the outlining of an extensive security testing strategy supported by the open source unit-testing framework HTTPUnit, and the introduction of the novel technique of security refactoring that transforms insecure working code into a functionally equivalent secure code. Today, many Web-based applications are not secure, and limited literature exists concerning the use of agile methods within this domain. It is the intention of this article to further discussions and research regarding the use of an agile methodology for the development of secure Web-based applications.
Incremental Learning for Interactive E-Mail Filtering
Authors: Chen Ding-Yi , Li Xue , Dong Zhao Yang , Chen Xia
Published: February 2011

In this article, we propose a framework, namely, Prediction-Learning-Distillation (PLD) for interactive document classification and distilling misclassified documents. Whenever a user points out misclassified documents, the PLD learns from the mistakes and identifies the same mistakes from all other classified documents. The PLD then enforces this learning for future classifications. If the classifier fails to accept relevant documents or reject irrelevant documents on certain categories, then PLD will assign those documents as new positive/negative training instances. The classifier can then strengthen its weakness by learning from these new training instances. Our experiments’ results have demonstrated that the proposed algorithm can learn from user-identified misclassified documents, and then distil the rest successfully.
FLOSSmole
Authors: Howison James , Conklin Megan , Crowston Kevin
Published: February 2011

This article introduces and expands on previous work on a collaborative project, called FLOSSmole (formerly OSSmole), designed to gather, share, and store comparable data and analyses of free, libre, and open source software (FLOSS) development for academic research. The project draws on the ongoing collection and analysis efforts of many research groups, reducing duplication, and promoting compatibility both across sources of FLOSS data and across research groups and analyses. The article outlines current difficulties with the current typical quantitative FLOSS research process and uses these to develop requirements and presents the design of the system.