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Triggered by the advancement of information and communications technology, open access repositories (a variant of digital libraries) is one of the important changes impacting library services. In the context of openness to a wider community to access free resources, Wawasan Open University Library initiated a research project to build open access repositories on open educational resources. Open educational resources (OER) is an area of a multifaceted open movement in education. The purpose of this paper is to show how two web portal repositories on OER materials were developed adopting a Japanese open source software, called WEKO.

The design approach is based on a pull to push strategy whereby metadata of scholarly open access materials kept within the institution and network communities’ digital databases were harvested using the Open Archives Initiatives Protocol for Metadata Harvesting method into another open knowledge platform for discovery by other users.

Positive results emanating from the university open access repositories development showed how it strengthen the role of the librarian as manager of institutional assets and successfully making the content freely available from this open knowledge platform for reuse in learning and teaching.

Developing further programmes to encourage, influence faculty members and prospective stakeholders to use and contribute content to the valuable repositories is indeed a challenging task.

This paper provides insight for academic libraries on how open access repositories development and metadata analysis can enhance new professional challenges for information professionals in the field of data management, data quality and intricacies of supporting data repositories and build new open models of collaboration across institutions and libraries. This paper also describes future collaboration work with institutions in sharing their open access resources.

About 10 years ago the Singapore Government realized that entrepreneurial spirit was lacking in its general population. These conclusions were confirmed by an empirical survey, the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM), an annual assessment of the national level of entrepreneurial activity. The paternalistic and authoritative approach of the government contributed to the general population’s averseness to participating in riskoriented ventures.

Removing impediments to entrepreneurship is a key challenge for the government and the business sector if the island republic is to maintain its national competitiveness. This article explores the various initiatives taken by the government to stimulate risk-taking and attempts to ascertain if the various measures can be used as key factors to strengthen the inherent cultural values that stimulate the entrepreneurial spirit.The observations can serve as a useful tool for academics and managers in recognizing the cultural traits that influence and help foster entrepreneurial tendencies.

The purpose of this study is to assess the barriers to the implementation of blockchain technology in construction supply chain management in Nigeria.

This study employed a quantitative research approach through a questionnaire survey that was conducted among professionals in the Nigerian construction industry using the snowball sampling method, which resulted in a selection of 155 respondents. The collected data were analysed using descriptive and exploratory factor analysis (EFA), while Cronbach's alpha was used to assess the reliability.

The analysis revealed that all barriers ranked above the average mean item score. It also revealed that all professionals have a convergent opinion on the barriers. EFA was used in clustering the identified barriers into two categories: technological and socio-political barrier.

This research was carried out in the Southwestern region which is one of the six geo-political zones in Nigeria using a cross-sectional survey method.

The findings provide valuable insights into the barriers to the implementation of blockchain in supply chain management for professionals and practitioners in the Nigerian construction industry.

The research categorised the barriers into technological and social-political barrier and identified that lack of digitalisation is the major barrier to the implementation of blockchain technology in construction supply chain.

This study aims to examine the impact of the decision makers’ risk preference on logistics routing problem, contributing to logistics behavior analysis and route integration optimization under uncertain environment. Due to the unexpected events and complex environment in modern logistics operations, the logistics process is full of uncertainty. Based on the chance function of satisfying the transportation time and cost requirements, this paper focuses on the fourth party logistics routing integrated optimization problem considering the chance preference of decision makers from the perspective of satisfaction.

This study used the quantitative method to investigate the relationship between route decision making and human behavior. The cumulative prospect theory is used to describe the loss, gain and utility function based on confidence levels. A mathematical model and an improved ant colony algorithm are employed to solve the problems. Numerical examples show the effectiveness of the proposed model and algorithm.

The study’s findings reveal that the dual-population improvement strategy enhances the algorithm’s global search capability and the improved algorithm can solve the risk model quickly, verifying the effectiveness of the improvement method. Moreover, the decision-maker is more sensitive to losses, and the utility obtained when considering decision-makers' risk attitudes is greater than that obtained when the decision-maker exhibits risk neutrality.

In an uncertain environment, the logistics decision maker’s risk preference directly affects decision making. Different parameter combinations in the proposed model could be set for decision-makers with different risk attitudes to fit their needs more accurately. This could help managers design effective transportation plans and improve service levels. In addition, the improved algorithm can solve the proposed problem quickly, stably and effectively, so as to help the decision maker to make the logistics path decision quickly according to the required confidence level.

Considering the uncertainty in logistics and the risk behavior of decision makers, this paper studies integrated routing problem from the perspective of opportunity preference. Based on the chance function of satisfying the transportation time and cost requirements, a fourth party logistics routing integrated optimization problem model considering the chance preference of decision makers is established. According to the characteristics of the problem, an improved dual-population ant colony algorithm is designed to solve the proposed model. Numerical examples show the effectiveness the proposed methods.

This study focused on investigation of the critical challenges the general contractors are facing in executing green building (GB) projects in Vietnam.

The study conducted a literature review and three in-depth interviews to define 31 potential challenges hindering success of GB projects. Data was collected from 163 respondents through the questionnaire survey and was analyzed by the mean ranking technique, EFA and PLS-SEM.

The result found general contractors in Vietnam are facing the four components of challenges, namely “Planning activities-related challenges”, “Organizational activities-related challenges”, “Onsite management and control activities-related challenges” and “Green supply chain-related challenges”; and all of them have statistically significant effects on success of GB projects in Vietnam. Furthermore, the most dominant component was related to the non-readiness of external GB supply chain.

The findings suggest for practical measures to enhance success of GB projects in Vietnam, including (1) completing the system of legal regulations and technical codes, standards, guidelines on GB, (2) providing incentive policies to promote the R&D activities on GB and (3) providing educational programs to improve the awareness and capacity on GB in domestic construction organizations, especially medium and small subcontractors.

This study seeks to gain a better understanding on critical challenges hindering success of green building projects under the view point of general contractors with reference to the context of Vietnam – a developing economy. This study is the first study to identify potential challenges and evaluate the impact of the key components of challenges on success of GB projects.