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This paper aims to urge the new culture of assessment of the quality of library services among Iran academic libraries and to assess the overall services quality of libraries from the users' perspectives based on the LibQUAL model.

In this survey researchers used the LibQUAL model to assess service quality in the central libraries in engineering and technical governmental universities in Tehran city. For gathering data of libraries users, researchers used the LibQUAL questionnaire in a non‐electronic format and translated into Farsi.

It was found that library users were dissatisfied with their library building. But these libraries performed very well in the information control dimension. Furthermore, the examination of users' expectations showed that the proposition “Employees who are consistently courteous” was most important, and “Employees who instill confidence in users” had less importance.

Using the LibQUAL Survey has helped the university libraries in Iran to better serve their main user groups, and for the first time researchers used the non‐electronic format of LibQUAL questionnaire in the survey.

The lockdown of libraries has led to changes in the delivery of services. Reviewing many studies in this regard appears to be of great importance. Thus, this study aims to analyze the articles related to libraries and COVID-19 using the co-occurrence analysis.

The current study is applied in terms of purpose and scientometrics in terms of type, which has been conducted using a retrospective bibliometric analysis method and drawing a science map. The relevant keywords were searched in the Scopus and 225 articles were reviewed in terms of author, year of publication, journal, organization and subject. Then, the VOSviewer software was used to analyze and illustrate the keywords and draw the scientific map of the articles.

The results showed that 225 articles by 496 authors from 66 countries and 379 organizations were published in the subject area of libraries and COVID-19. These articles have received 620 citations. The co-occurrence analysis of words showed that these scientific productions are classified into four clusters: “The role of libraries and librarians”, “The use of media, social network and communication technologies in order provide library services”, “Online Library Services” and “Infodemic and misinformation in the COVID-19 Pandemic”.

It is the first time during the COVID-19 pandemic that a scientific map has been drawn up of studies that have examined the role of libraries in this pandemic. The results of the present study may help libraries to access what they need to consider in any crisis.

This study aims to explore the strategic impact of R&D and export activity on the diverse dimensions of US manufacturing firms’ performance. It also explores, using a predictive analytic model, the interactive synergistic effect that R&D and exports have on firm performance.

This study presents an innovative two-stage regression-neural network approach. Complementing conventional statistical analysis, the predictive backpropagation neural network explores the relative impact of R&D and exports and their synergistic effect on firm performance.

This study demonstrates the significant and positive effect of R&D and export strategy/activity on the economic performance of leading US manufacturing firms, particularly on their market-based performance (i.e. sustained growth rate or SGR). Furthermore, this study finds that the synergistic effect of R&D and exports on short-term performance (i.e. return on investment) is positive in high-tech firms but negative in low-tech firms. However, the synergistic effect on SGR is increasingly positive regardless of the level of technology.

In addition to traditional statistical analysis, this study uniquely investigates the relative importance of selected strategic variables, along with R&D and export activity and their differential synergistic effects, for firms’ economic performance in contrasting industry settings (high-tech vs low-tech).