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European Union (EU) research projects generally involve international teams based in different countries. This means that researchers need to travel internationally to participate for in-person meetings, which are crucial for facilitating collaboration among research teams and provide a platform for teams to share their progress. Unfortunately, much of the international traveling in EU projects is done by air and therefore it has a significant carbon footprint. One potential solution that has gained attention in recent years is virtual reality (VR) and the metaverse. The aim of this work is to investigate to what degree VR meetings provide a viable alternative to physical meetings in the context of EU research projects and can thus contribute to climate change mitigation.

A three-stepped approach was chosen. First, the requirements for VR meetings were determined by collecting all relevant aspects of physical meetings through a questionnaire. Second, a set of VR meeting experiments were designed and executed. Third, carbon footprints for both physical traveling and VR meetings (lifecycle) were calculated.

We conclude that VR can be a powerful tool which can supplement international projects and mitigate carbon emissions associated with traveling for in-person meetings by an estimated 7–19 times.

This paper explores the suitability of the current generation of VR technology and quantitatively evaluates its effectiveness for greenhouse gas emissions mitigation in the context of a European research project.

Given the overlapping themes and periods in specific subjects within Islamic economics and finance bibliometric research, which may yield similar findings in bibliometric studies, it is essential to document the growth of Islamic economic and financial research using bibliometric methodologies. This study aims to understand better the critical bibliometric review trends and scientific advancements in Islamic economics and finance.

This study uses bibliometric analysis, collecting 46 Islamic economics bibliometric papers from the Web of Science Core Collection from 1975 to 2022. The authors generated top scientific scholars, keyword analysis, citation analysis, content analysis and conclusions for journal development using R Biblioshiny, VOSviewer, ATLAS.ti and Excel.

This study has established a comprehensive bibliometric framework for Islamic economics and finance bibliometric papers, encompassing all critical areas within the discipline and identifying any remaining research gaps. The major significant areas revealed were Islamic social finance and microfinance concerns, which are closely pertinent to the issues of ethics, corporate social responsibility and sustainability, respectively. The authors also identified opportunities for future bibliometric analyses in Islamic economics and finance, which include using more comprehensive databases, refining or broadening search strategies, using advanced techniques and units of analysis and suggesting themes for further exploration.

The study relies merely on the Web of Science Core Collection database, which provides the most in-depth citations by source for the world’s scientific and scholarly research. Future research may consider expanding its scope to include other databases for a broader range of sources. Furthermore, due to the rise of bibliometric studies in Islamic economics and finance, this study also comments on the saturation of bibliometric studies conducted in several similar areas. While researchers bring their unique analytical perspectives to bibliometrics, this study provides a comprehensive view of existing research in Islamic economics and finance, highlighting well-explored topics and those that remain less studied. Thus, this could assist researchers in determining their future research priorities.

Policymakers in Islamic financial and economic institutions, including banking institutions, social, financial institutions and halal institutions, should be impacted by this research when making policies or conducting research. The viability of the current Islamic economic and financial ecosystem will be indirectly maintained and managed by these implications.

This comprehensive meta-analysis in Islamic economics and finance is expected to impact the development and sustainability of the Islamic economic and financial ecosystem, promoting societal welfare through applying Islamic economics and finance.

This pioneering bibliometric analysis of Islamic economics and finance papers aims to offer insights and projections for future research in the field. This research contributes to the literature by examining various aspects, including evaluating literature on trending topics, analyzing papers related to research areas and conducting content analysis of existing bibliometric studies in Islamic economics and finance. It specifically groups these studies around fundamental topics, summarizes findings from contemporary research and identifies emerging research gaps.

Despite the advent of New Public Management theories over three decades ago, doubts persist regarding the practical implementation of these principles in the public health-care context. Challenges arise particularly from the type of system where this phenomenon is analyzed. In the Italian context, for instance, it can be arduous to define universally applicable organizational behaviors, given the interregional disparity that characterizes such a system. Furthermore, the professional identity of clinician-managers influences the perception of what “being a manager” means. This paper, thus, using the Italian context as a reference, aims to delineate what is the perception of Italian public hospitals clinician-middle-managers in terms of their responsibilities and tasks.

A survey-questionnaire was distributed to 6,011 Chief Medical Officers (CMOs) in Italian public hospitals, representing 100% of such role holders in the country. With a response rate of 16.7%, 1,005 responses were obtained. The questionnaire assessed CMOs' attitudes toward specific activities relevant to clinician-management, ranked from most to least important. Activities were derived from literature and categorized to discern management styles. Subgroups based on geographical location and professional orientation were also identified to isolate regional effects and professional identity influences.

Results suggested that activities associated with a collaborative approach are perceived as most important. Furthermore, it clearly emerges the difference based on professional orientation of CMOs. However, it could not be appreciated the same level of difference basing the analysis on regional disparities.

The interest in the role of middle management in healthcare organizations has increased over the years. Nevertheless, currently the authors believe that not many studies are focused on defining what “being a manager” means for clinician-managers themselves, rather than explaining what clinician-managers shall do.

Incidents of violence and aggression are a regular occurrence within adult forensic mental health inpatient settings and often lead to the use of restrictive practices such as seclusion. Such events are frequently attributed to the complexity of the patients. Research commonly focuses on patient’s characteristics and their association with seclusion use. Less attention has been centred on forensic mental health nurses’ attitudes to seclusion and the association of nursing staff characteristics.

A cross-sectional survey was undertaken using a standardised questionnaire, “Survey of Nurses’ Attitudes to Seclusion”. Responses were received from n = 147 nurses at a high secure forensic mental health hospital in the UK.

Key findings indicate that most participants believed seclusion should remain part of clinical practice. A correlation was identified between forensic mental health nurses’ attitudes to seclusion use and their characteristics: gender, age range, educational level and experience.

This paper presents novel information on seclusion reduction opportunities through modifiable workforce factors such as gender-sensitive rostering and staff training and development. Furthermore, recruitment and retention strategies should be prioritised so forensic mental health is perceived as an attractive career and a safe workplace.

The paucity of research in this area has prompted calls for further research to explore nursing staff characteristics and seclusion use. This is particularly important now due to the current global difficulty in the recruitment and retention of mental health nurses.

This study aims to enhance integration of game-based learning (GBL) as a tool for conveying intricate circular economy (CE) concepts effectively into international and interdisciplinary higher education collaborations for the development of sustainable communities.

A series of game-based workshops by the Circular EELISA Community of the EELISA European University program were examined in terms of their compliance with literature-based GBL characteristics and their international, interdisciplinary and online conduct. An online survey conducted with 17 workshop and/or challenge organizers from four participating universities in different countries revealed expert experiences and perceptions on these points.

It was found that sensory elements, rewards and game choice enhanced engagement and motivation in all gamification, serious game and storytelling experiences, and that a combination of multiple GBL approaches was more effective than a single-method challenge design. Diversity-friendly collaboration, cooperation and immersion were particularly important when involving culturally and disciplinarily diverse participants.

This study offers practical recommendations to improve both the performance of GBL-based learning environments in current and future education alliances and collaborations and the potential of GBL approaches to motivate youth to contribute to more sustainable communities across and beyond Europe.

The findings underscore the value of innovative pedagogical methods in shaping environmentally conscious mindsets and practices across institutions of higher education. To that end, this is the first study that investigates GBL in CE education with implications for international university cooperation.

This study aims to examine decision factors for global sourcing, differentiated into transcontinental and continental sourcing to obtain insight into locational aspects of sourcing decisions and global trends. This study analyzed various country perceptions to reveal their influence on sourcing decisions. The country of origin (COO) theory explains why certain country perceptions and images influence purchasing experts in their selection of suppliers.

This study used a two-study approach. In Study 1, the authors conducted discrete choice card experiments with 71 purchasing experts located in Europe and the USA to examine the importance of essential decision factors for global sourcing. Given the clear evidence that location is a factor in sourcing decisions, in Study 2 the authors investigated purchasers’ perceptions and images of countries, adding country ranking experiments on various perceived characteristics such as quality, price and technology.

Study 1 provides evidence that the purchasers’ personal relationship with the supplier plays a decisive role in the supplier selection process. While product quality and location impact sourcing decisions, the attraction of the buying company and cultural barriers are less significant. Interestingly, however, these factors seem as important as price to respondents. This implies that a strong relationship with suppliers and good quality products are essential aspects of a reliable and robust supply chain in the post-COVID-19 era. Examining the locational aspect in detail, Study 2 linked the choice card experiments with country ranking experiments. In this study, the authors found that purchasing experts consider that transcontinental countries such as Japan and China offer significant advantages in terms of price and technology. China has enhanced its quality, which is recognizable in the country ranking experiments. Therefore, decisions on global sourcing are not just based on such high-impact factors as price and availability; country perceptions are also influential. Additionally, the significance of the locational aspect could be linked to certain country images of transcontinental suppliers, as the COO theory describes.

The new approach divides global sourcing into transcontinental and European sourcing to evaluate special decision factors and link these factors to the locational aspect of sourcing decisions. To deepen the clear evidence for the locational aspect and investigate the possible influence of country perceptions, the authors applied the COO theory. This approach enabled authors to show the strong influence of country perception on purchasing departments, which is represented by the locational effect. Hence, the success of transcontinental countries relies not only on factors such as their availability but also on the purchasers’ positive perceptions of these countries in terms of technology and price.

Urban communities can be faced with many destructive events that can disrupt the daily functioning of activities and livelihood of people living in the communities. In this regard, during the last couple of years, many governments have put a lot of efforts into building resilient urban communities. Essentially, a resilient urban community has the capacity to anticipate future disasters, prepare for and recover timely from adverse effects of disasters and unexpected circumstances. Considering this, it is therefore important for the need to continuously review the existing urban community resilience indicators, in order to identify emerging ones to enable comprehensive evaluation of urban communities in the future against unexpected events. This study therefore aims to conduct a systematic review to develop and critically analyse the emerging and leading urban community resilience indicators.

Following the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRSIMA) protocol, 53 journal articles were selected using Scopus. The selected papers were subjected to thorough content analysis.

From the review, 45 urban community resilience indicators were identified. These indicators were grouped into eight broad categories namely, Socio-demographic, Economic, Institutional Resilience, Infrastructure and Housing Resilience, Collaboration, Community Capital, Risk Data Accumulation and Geographical and Spatial characteristics of community. Further, the results indicated that the U.S had the highest number of publications, followed by Australia, China, New Zealand and Taiwan. In fact, very few studies emanated from developing economies.

The outputs of this study will inform policymakers, practitioners and researchers on the new and emerging indicators that should be considered when evaluating the resilience level of urban communities. The findings will also serve as a theoretical foundation for further detailed empirical investigation.

Higher education institutions and their lecturers are strategic agents and main drivers that contribute to circular economy transition. This requires them to understand the key circular economy competencies and how to integrate circular economy holistically into their curricula with the suitable teaching and learning approaches. This study aims to support them by providing an overview on the characteristics of education for the circular economy (ECE) and suggestions to lecturers to further develop their curricula.

The data consisted of scientific articles (n = 22) describing circular economy courses in higher education. Qualitative content analysis with quantitative features was performed on the selected articles to answer the research question.

The findings confirm that the system’s focus is the key issue in ECE. However, to integrate circular economy holistically into the curricula, ECE should be implemented more widely in the context of different industries and market contexts to find innovative teaching and learning approaches. The demand side needs to be incorporated in the courses, as systemic transformation is also about transforming consumption. All levels of implementation and circular economy objectives should be included in courses to promote systems thinking. In addition, innovative forms of real workplace interaction should be increased.

As ECE has started to emerge as a new field of study, this article provides the first integrated overview of the topic.