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The purpose of this study is to investigate the current construction progress monitoring (CPM) process in relation to the contractual obligations, how project management teams carry out this activity in the field and why teams continue to adopt the current method. The study aims to provide a comprehensive understanding of the current monitoring process and its effectiveness, identify any shortcomings and propose recommendations for improvements that can lead to better project outcomes.

The study conducted semi-structured interviews with 28 construction management practitioners to explore their views on contractual requirements, traditional progress monitoring practices and advanced monitoring methods. Thematic analysis was used to identify existing processes, practices and incentives for advanced monitoring.

Standard construction contracts mandate current progress monitoring practices, which often rely on manual, document-centric and labor-intensive methods, leading to slow and erroneous progress reporting and project delays. Key barriers to adopting advanced tools include rigid contractual clauses, lack of incentives and the absence of reliable automated tools. A holistic automated approach that covers the entire CPM process, from planning to claim management, is needed as a viable alternative to traditional practices.

The study's findings can inform researchers, stakeholders and decision-makers about the existing monitoring practices and contribute to enhancing project management practices.

The study identified contractually mandated progress monitoring processes, traditional methods of collecting, transferring, analyzing and dispensing progress-related information and potential incentives and points of departure towards technologically advanced methods.

This study aims to examine the publishing and citation trends on library service quality (LSQ) in the past five decades (1972–2020). Additionally, this bibliometric study investigates the top authors, countries, organizations, journals, nature of collaboration, highly cited articles and LSQ sub-areas.

Bibliometric analysis has been used to extract data from the Scopus and Web of Science (WOS) databases. A comprehensive search strategy was devised to extract relevant data from both data sources. Finally, 341 Scopus and 212 WOS records were selected. Data analysis has been performed using VOS viewer software, Biblioshiny, Cite Space and Excel.

It was found that a total of 443 items were published in Scopus (n = 341) and WOS (n = 212) during this period. The largest number of studies were published in the year 2019 (n = 29), and the USA was found to be the most productive country, with the most productive organizations, authors and author collaborations. The Texas A&M University in Texas, USA, had the top three most productive authors (Cook C, Thompson B and Heath F) and was the most productive organization. The Performance Measurement and Metrics Journal is on the top of the list. The single author was the prevailing authorship pattern, followed by the two-authors pattern. The most collaborating countries were identified as the UK, Japan, Spain and Bangladesh. The keyword analysis informed that the published literature on LSQ mainly concentrated on academic libraries, Therefore, there is a need further to examine other types of libraries including public, national, special libraries.

To the best of the knowledge, this seems to be the first comprehensive bibliometric study that combined productivity and citations, citation impact to present a holistic picture of the LSQ literature.

This research study is conducted to thoroughly investigate the users' expectations for excellent library service quality (LSQ) from college libraries. It will also identify whether there is any difference in the desired library service quality among different type of users, gender and academic discipline.

A survey method was used, and the data were collected from 998 respondents, which included faculty members, masters, bachelor's and intermediate students. In order to conduct the study, LibQUAL + instrument were adapted.

The results demonstrated that the users expected a higher level of services from the college libraries of Pakistan. The highest desired expectation of the users were related to “library as a place (LP)” dimension, while the lowest expectation was with regards to the “information control (IC)” dimension. The results indicated a significant difference among the various types of users and academic disciplines regarding their expectations with library services.

The appointment of college librarians against nearly 500 vacant posts would significantly improve the LSQ in these libraries. The result of the study would indeed be useful for the college administration, librarians the Government of the Punjab and the Punjab Higher Education Commission (HEC) for future planning, improvement of services and allocation of resources.

This study is the first in-depth effort into investigating the LSQ of the college libraries of the Punjab, Pakistan. This study will be helpful to understand the LSQ from developing countries’ perspective.

This study aims to investigate the impact of corporate governance compliance, governance reforms and board attributes on operating liquidity of Pakistani listed non-financial firms. The study further tests how these relationships vary in the pre- and post-corporate governance reforms.

Fixed-effect regression model is used on 10 years panel data from 2007 to 2016 for a sample of 170 firms listed on the Pakistan Stock Exchange. Two-stage least squares model is used for addressing the endogeneity problem.

The findings reveal that governance compliance and governance reforms negatively affect operating liquidity. Among the board attributes, board meetings, directors’ remuneration, board foreign diversity and board gender diversity are significantly related to operating liquidity. Further exploration indicates that internal governance mechanisms are less effective to safeguard shareholders from expropriation during weak external governance. This suggests that strong external governance is inevitable to the effectiveness of internal governance mechanisms. Overall, the study findings support the agency theory.

The findings provide valid recommendations to policymakers interested in safeguarding the investors to focus on macro-level governance for making the micro-level governance effective. Further, the results provide the executives with an insight to improve the compliance level with the code of corporate governance.

Unlike prior studies, this study examines the impact of corporate governance compliance and novel board attributes – directors’ attendance at board meetings, number of board committees, directors’ remuneration and board foreign diversity on operating liquidity. Further, the study subdivides its sample period into pre- and post-corporate governance reforms to examine how external governance influences internal governance effectiveness.

This study aims to investigate the research productivity of library and information science (LIS) authors affiliated with the 22 countries of the Arab League. It also identifies the top countries, organizations, authors, journals, natures of collaboration, and frequently used keywords in LIS research in the Arab world.

Bibliometric methods were used to evaluate the research performance of the authors affiliated with library organizations in the Arab region. The Elsevier Scopus database was selected for data retrieval. A comprehensive search strategy was adopted to retrieve 863 publications contributed by LIS authors affiliated with the Arab countries. VOS viewer, Biblioshiny, BiblioAnalyitics, Microsoft Access and Microsoft Excel were used for data visualization and analysis.

This paper presents the dynamics and the state of the LIS research in the Arab region published between 1951 and 2021. The results of the study have highlighted an upward trend in the growth of the publications, especially in the past four years. The largest number of studies were published in the year 2020. The country-wise analysis ranked Kuwait and Saudi Arabia as the top LIS research producing countries with five and four researchers, respectively. The Kuwait University, the King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals and the Imam Abdulrahman Bin Faisal University were the three most productive organizations. Academic libraries, social media, bibliometrics, information-seeking behavior, information literacy and knowledge management were identified as the major areas of interest for the researchers. Internet and open access were topics that had gained recent popularity, while the digital library, research data management, green librarianship, link data, cloud computing, library leadership, library automation and artificial intelligence were identified as areas requiring further attention. Furthermore, the single-author pattern was found to be the most preferred pattern.

The findings of this study would help prospective researchers in choosing the neglected areas of research that require further investigation. They would also help policymakers in identifying factors that need more attention and allocation of research funds.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first comprehensive bibliometric study that presents a holistic picture of the LIS research in the Arab region.

The purpose of the study is to map the funding status of COVID-19 research. The various aspects, such as funding ratio, geographical distribution of funded articles, journals publishing funded research and institutions that sponsor the COVID-19 research are studied. To visualize the country collaboration network and research trends/hotspots in the field of COVID-19 funded research, keyword analysis is also performed. The open-access (OA) status of the funded research on COVID-19 is also discussed.

The leading indexing and abstracting database, i.e. Web of Science (WoS), was used to retrieve the funded articles published on the topic COVID-19. The scientometric approach, more particularly “funding acknowledgment analysis (FAA),” was used to study the research funding.

A total of 5,546 publications of varied nature have been published on COVID-19, of which 1,760 are funded, thus indicating a funding ratio of 32%. China is the leading producer of funded research (760, 43.182%) on COVID-19 followed by the USA (482, 27.386%), England (179, 10.17%), Italy (119, 6.761%), Germany (107, 6.08%) and Canada (107, 6.08%). China is also in lead in terms of the funding ratio (60.94%). However, the funding ratio of the USA (31.54%) is at 11th rank behind Canada (40.68%), Germany (34.18%) and England (35.87%). The USA occupies a central position in the collaboration network having the highest score of articles with other countries (n = 489), with the USA–China collaboration ranking first (n = 123). National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) is the largest source of funding for COVID-19 research, supporting 342 (19.432%) publications, followed by the United States Department of Health Human Services (DHHS) and National Institute of Health (NIH), USA with 211 (11.989%) and 200 (11.364%) publications, respectively. However, China's National Key Research and Development Program achieves the highest citation impact (80.24) for its funded publications. Journal of Medical Virology, Science of the Total Environment and EuroSurveillance are the three most prolific journals publishing 63 (3.58%), 35 (1.989%) and 32 (1.818%), respectively, of the sponsored research articles on the COVID-19. A total of 3,138 institutions produce funded articles with Huazhong University of Science Technology and Wuhan University from China at the forefront publishing 92 (5.227%) and 83 (4.716%) publications, respectively. The funded research on COVID-19 is largely available in OA mode (1,674, 95.11%) and mainly through the Green and Bronze routes. The keyword clustering reveals that the articles mainly focus on the impact, structure and clinical characteristics of the virus.

The study's main limitation is that the results are based on the publications indexed by WoS, which has limited coverage compared to other databases. Moreover, all the funding agencies do not require or authors miss to acknowledge funding sources in their publications, which ultimately undermines the number of funded publications. The research publications on COVID-19 are also proliferating; thus, the study's findings shall be valid for a minimum period.

The funding of research on the COVID-19 is highly essential to accelerate innovative research and help countries fight against the global pandemic. The study's findings reflect the efforts made by nations and institutions to remove the financial and accessibility hurdles. It not only underscores the lead of the USA in the research on COVID-19, but also shows China as a forerunner in sponsoring the research, thus, helping to know the contribution of nations toward understanding the dynamics of pandemic and controlling it. The study will help healthcare practitioners and policymakers recognize the areas that remain the focus of sponsored research on COVID-19 and other left-out areas that need to be taken up and thus may help in policy formulation. It further highlights the impact of prolific funding agencies so that efforts may be initiated to increase the impact and thereby the returns of investment. The study can help to map the scientific structure of COVID-19 through the lens of funded research and recognize core inclinations of its development. Overall, a comprehensive analysis has been performed to present the detailed characteristics of sponsored research on emerging area of COVID-19, and it is informative, useful and one of its kind on the theme.

The study explores the funding support of research on COVID-19 and its other aspects, along with the mode of availability.

Researchers’ competencies are directly related to the quality and effectiveness of the research they produce. However, training opportunities for education and conducting research seem to be limited for the growing research culture in Pakistan. The purpose of this study is to assess the research-related training needs of postgraduate researchers (PGRs) of Pakistan.

A quantitative research approach was used to conduct the study using a questionnaire. Non-random sampling technique was used to collect the data from the postgraduate (MPhil/MS and PhD) researchers enrolled in the two well renowned Pakistani Universities.

Results of the study confirmed that PGRs were interested in developing their skills in various areas of a research project such as topic selection, research design and use of data analysis software. Findings also highlighted that respondents were interested in learning reference management tools for citing and managing the sources of information in their research work.

This is the first study, which investigated the training needs assessment of PGRs enrolled in two major Pakistani universities. The results may help in designing training programs, promoting a conducive research culture in the country and improving the quality of research being produced. This study provided a framework likely to be beneficial for quality enhancement cells, universities and organizations in organizing effective research training and development programs for researchers of Pakistan.

This paper is a systematic review that aims to collect and review studies on library users’ smartphone use to access library services and resources. Another objective of the systematic review is to identify the challenges and benefits (reported in the reviewed literature) regarding using smartphones to access library resources and services.

The researchers searched the relevant literature from four databases: Scopus, Library and Information Science Technology Abstracts, Web of Science and Google Scholar. A total of 20 studies were selected, out of the 2,416 retrieved titles, for review in light of the PRISMA guidelines. This systematic review also used the quality assessment guidelines of Boynton and Greenhalgh (2004), to analyze the quality of the publications reviewed in the study.

The results highlighted that library users used smartphones to access a wide range of library services, including directions help, fresh arrivals, library news notifications, room and course reservations, library account management, circulation and the Online Public Access Catalogue (OPAC). The libraries offered their users multiple mobile-supported services related to searching for resources and account management. The challenges, as well as the benefits associated with the use of smartphones for accessing and using library services, have also been reported. Most reviewed studies scored high (9–13 out of 13) in the quality assessment.

This research has some limitations. First, only the English-language research studies were included in the review. Therefore, it is possible that a significant study conducted in a language other than English was missed. Second, researchers performed a comprehensive search to collect the maximum number of relevant studies; there is a chance that an important study was missed during the search and retrieval process.

This research fills the research gap by advancing the literature on mobile device use for accessing library services and resources. The findings might help library professionals understand the current trends in accessing library services through smartphones. This also helps them plan the latest mobile-supported library services to meet the ever-changing demands of library users. Policymakers could also benefit from this research, as it could help them understand current trends in library services and facilitate them in making appropriate policies, funding allocations and implementing mobile services in libraries.

The researchers found that the use of mobile phones to access library services and resources impacts society in a discernible way. It provides a rich environment as users access a wide range of library services, including directions help, fresh arrivals, library news notifications, room and course reservations, library account management, circulation and the OPAC without any hindrances or hurdles.

This is the first review, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, that has systematically collected and reviewed the literature on the topic under study. This study also shares the theoretical and practical implications of the research and future research directions for researchers.

Equity, diversity, inclusion and accessibility (EDIA) are the core values of librarianship. This study aims to examine the EDIA literature in the library and information science (LIS) profession, focusing on publishing trends, authorship patterns, thematic evolution, co-occurrence network, international collaboration network and three-factor analysis.

A scientometrics analysis was performed, and data were retrieved from the Web of Science database following a four-phase data extraction and filtration process. Data analysis was performed using specialized scientometrics tools.

Most of the published work comes from the developed world. The thematic evolution identified that the initial period (1971–2010) was dedicated to the diversity of library resources, services and users. The second phase (2011–2015) concentrated on accessibility and information literacy. The recent period (2016–2021) is linked with social inclusion, diversity and accessibility. Furthermore, the co-cluster citation and content analysis identified five major interconnected streams in the EDIA literature in LIS: disability and accessibility; diversity, inclusion and recruitment; social justice and libraries; libraries and immigrants; and libraries and the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered, queer community.

Theoretical, practical and implications for policy makers and curriculum developers were added to create awareness and better observe EDIA in LIS field.

The identification of research streams is one of the most important findings of this study, which shows that some areas of EDIA are maturing and others are emerging in the profession.

The use of mobile technologies and learning devices has been increasing in every field of life, and library and information sciences are no exception. This study aims to explore the perceptions of library and information science (LIS) students regarding mobile learning (m-learning) along with their primary purposes, social media applications, advantages, disadvantages, barriers, impact and overall satisfaction with using these devices.

A survey method was used, and data was collected from the students of 12 library schools in Pakistan for a total sample of 250 students.

Their main purposes of usage, their needs, advantages, disadvantages, barriers, impacts and the level of overall satisfaction were also identified. The inferential statistics (t-test and ANOVA) also identified the difference of opinion on the basis of gender, programs, types and number of m-learning devices. Overall, the findings highlight the need for academic libraries to give mobile access (launching mobile applications) to better use library services. To ensure this, libraries must keep an eye on new advances in mobile technology, researchers’ needs and related electronic library services and observe how these services are being used.

Theoretical and practical implications have been highlighted to understand the perceptions of LIS students about m-learning devices.

The mobile library service providers and management need to improve their services by offering services that fit the diverse needs of their users and should know how to attract modern library users.