Pandemics are catalysts of scientific novelty: Evidence from COVID ‐19

Scientific novelty drives the efforts to invent new vaccines and solutions during the pandemic. First‐time collaboration and international collaboration are two pivotal channels to expand teams' search activities for a broader scope of resources required to address the global challenge, which might facilitate the generation of novel ideas. Our analysis of 98,981 coronavirus papers suggests that scientific novelty measured by the BioBERT model that is pretrained on 29 million PubMed articles, and first‐time collaboration increased after the outbreak of COVID‐19, and international collaboration witnessed a sudden decrease. During COVID‐19, papers with more first‐time collaboration were found to be more novel and international collaboration did not hamper novelty as it had done in the normal periods. The findings suggest the necessity of reaching out for distant resources and the importance of maintaining a collaborative scientific community beyond nationalism during a pandemic.

On the lacking visibility of management research from non-Western countries

Purpose

For a long time, researchers across the world have called for more generalizable frameworks in management research, which can be used to better understand local contexts and to extend established theories in Western countries. However, research from non-Western countries is barely visible in high-impact management journals. Although most researchers have tried to understand this lacking visibility from a more technological perspective, this study aims to analyze the extent to which group psychological processes influence the selection of international publication strategies by non-Western researchers in this study.

Design/methodology/approach

Hypotheses were based on social identity theory. In total, 169 management researchers from India were surveyed and their social identities and the international publication strategy were assessed.

Findings

It could be confirmed that higher identification with non-Western researchers is negatively related to the intention to publish internationally.

Social implications

The findings suggest that current approaches to increasing the low visibility of non-Western research require a general revision.

Originality/value

This study adds a new angle to the center–periphery debate by incorporating the influence of social identities on the selection of an international publication strategy. Research socialization in the periphery seems to increase the likelihood of choosing local publication outlets rather than aiming for international publications. Therefore, it is necessary to implement strategies that aim at the psychological inclusion of peripheral researchers to increase their visibility in international journals and on international platforms.

Logistics management research collaboration in Asia

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the state of logistics management research in Asia. The study focuses on the research agenda, the topics of interest, and the extent of research collaboration in logistics theory building and knowledge specific to Asia.

Design/methodology/approach

This study uses a mixed methods approach namely, content analysis drawn from the articles found in six well-recognized peer-reviewed logistics management related journals from 2003 to 2013, followed by social network analysis which is applied on the selected articles to provide a structure of the collaboration relationship.

Findings

Initial findings suggest that there are some scholars in Asia who are instrumental in research collaboration and in building a body of knowledge on logistics management focused on Asia. More co-production of knowledge from deeper and tightly knit industry-academic collaboration is needed to progress this domain. Most of the published work use an empirical instrument drawn from the resource-based view to explore firm level supply chain collaboration and strategy. This suggests a positivist research tradition within logistics. There is a shortage of studies conducted on the supply chain as a network of enterprises.

Research limitations/implications

The review of the articles is limited to six logistics specific journals and the authors only concentrate on logistics management research focused on Asia. The contributions from the other journals may have been missed. More collaboration at the institutional, national, and international levels is called for especially on cross-collaboration between practice and theory.

Practical implications

Though the analysis is restricted to 260 articles found in six journals, this paper can shed light on the research needs from different perspectives and facilitate the progress of logistics management research in Asia.

Originality/value

This is the first paper to discuss the state of logistics management research collaboration in Asia, and provides an overview of the research issues, topics, and approaches undertaken thus far. Through this work, this study hopes that it will encourage greater research collaboration between industry and academia, and academics themselves.