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Achieving better performance and a sustainable competitive advantage is essential for survival in the hotel industry. However, literature is scarce on which factors local hotel businesses in developing countries should rely on to compete successfully. With an emerging economy and significant potential for growth in the travel and hospitality sectors, Colombia is seeking to improve the performance of its hotel industry. To achieve this goal, exploring and analyzing the effects of the strategies and practices implemented is essential. Accordingly, this study investigates the dynamics of the interactions between strategies, process innovations, outsourcing practices and operational quality in the hotel industry in Colombia.

The methodology used in this research is quantitative, using structural equation modeling based on data collected from 150 valid questionnaires.

The strategies of the hotel sector have an impact on hotel performance. Although process innovation demonstrably affects quality and outsourcing, there is a low impact on the performance of the studied hotels. The hotel sector lacks strategy autonomy as strategies are not directed to the organization's overall improvement but only to satisfy stakeholders' requirements.

This paper offers valuable insights for organizations when implementing strategic innovation initiatives. It provides information relevant to Colombian government entities on the creation of processes, economic policy plans and business assistance programs for boosting the financial and commercial sustainability of Colombian service sector businesses. The studied organizations need to redefine the role of their strategies, process innovation, outsourcing projects and quality standards to achieve adequate performance, as all four dimensions together are required to foster competitiveness.

This paper offers valuable insights for organizations when implementing strategic innovation initiatives. Additionally, it provides information relevant to Colombian government entities on the creation of processes, economic policy plans and business assistance programs for boosting the financial and commercial sustainability of Colombian service sector businesses. The studied organizations need to redefine the role of their strategies, process innovation, outsourcing projects and quality standards to achieve adequate performance, as all four dimensions together are required to foster competitiveness.

Developing successful strategies is vital to generating performance. Quality and safety are critical strategies to achieve a sustainable competitive advantage. But literature is scarce on which factors local hotel businesses should rely on to compete successfully in developing countries. In particular, the concept of outsourcing in a highly distrusting developing country has not been addressed adequately. This research contributes to literature by evaluating quality as a competitive strategy in the hotel sector in a developing country to achieve a superior performance.

This paper aims to explore the relationship between clustering and hotel competitiveness in emerging economy destinations by analyzing potential mediation of the management innovations implemented.

This empirical study is based on hotel-level information from a survey including 131 hotels in 2014. Colombia was chosen as a representative of Colombia, Indonesia, Vietnam, Egypt, Turkey and South Africa (CIVETS) emerging destinations. The relationships were analyzed by structural modeling and partial least squares.

Clustering has a positive direct impact on hotel competitiveness and innovation, and there is a positive effect of innovation on competitiveness. Therefore, the link between clustering and competitiveness is partially mediated through implementation of management innovations.

Hotels should actively participate in agglomerated destinations and build relationships with established firms by clustering. Interaction with related firms and implementation of management innovations will lead to increased levels of economic competitiveness. Public policymakers should foster collaborative strategic networking in the hospitality industry of emerging economy destinations.

This paper focused on separating the direct and indirect effects of clustering on hotel competitiveness. Implementation of management innovations was considered as an outcome derived from clustering in emerging tourist destinations, using the example of Colombia. Clustering stimulates and eases management innovations within the location, and that combination reinforces the role that cooperating while competing plays in hotel competitiveness for destinations with lagging innovation.

This editorial underscores the importance of linked data and linked open data (LD/LOD) in contemporary librarianship and information science. It aims to present the motivation for this special issue of Library High Tech (LHT), specifically the theme of linking and opening vocabularies (LOV) as a component of the LOD landscape. The editorial also seeks to describe the content of the papers and their contributions in the areas of current practice, trends, and R&D (research and development).

The editorial is organized into four main sections: Introductory aspects about linking open data; the context and inspiration for this special issue of LHT; a description of the accepted papers highlighting their contribution for LOV; and a conclusion.

The editorial presents several reflective insights for advancing LOD and LOV practices that may lead toward a more integrated semantic web.

The editorial presents a synthesis of the three editors' views on approaching the subject of linking open vocabularies. The framework for the editorial is reflected in the original call for papers that supported this special issue.

Purpose – Researchers use the concept of biosociality and a disability studies framework of empowerment to present and analyze examples of community formation and participation for youth with pediatric multiple sclerosis.

Methodology – The data were collected using participant observation, individual and focus group interviews during Teen Adventure Camps held in the summers of 2004–2009 and an Educational Transition Retreat held in the fall of 2008.

Findings – Evidence of community formation and identification include the development of formal and informal systems for mutual support and mentoring, as well as transformations in self-perception and collective identity. Challenges to community formation include differing perspectives about disability-pride vs. diagnosis-specific affiliations.

Research implications – This research indicates that there are many pathways to individual and community identification which may include and even intertwine both diagnosis-specific and disability-pride approaches. The process of community formation is transformative, thus preferences with regard to community identification should not be considered stable, but rather understood as a developmental process that may change over time.

Originality/value of paper – Building upon social and minority group theories, this research moved beyond social critique to develop and implement strategies for community development, individual, and group empowerment.

The purpose of this paper is to present different verification algorithms that will be used by digital rights management (DRM) systems to enable the governed distribution, super‐distribution and offers of multimedia content. An issue of increased interest in DRM systems is the control of the creation, distribution and consumption of multimedia content through the complete digital value chain.

The design and implementation of verification algorithms based on licences is described. Tools implementing these algorithms are used by DRM systems in B2B and B2C models where the distribution, offer and consumption of digital assets are controlled. Some use cases regarding the distribution, super‐distribution and offer models are presented.

It has been demonstrated that DRM systems governing the use of multimedia content through the complete distribution chain can use the verification algorithms proposed in this paper to enable governed distribution of multimedia content. By using these algorithms, they can determine whether the rights have been passed in a proper way from parent to child licences. Moreover, these systems can also enforce the rights when distributing multimedia content.

The algorithms proposed can be used by DRM systems that control the use of multimedia content through the complete digital value chain. These algorithms have been designed to ensure that the permissions and constraints passed from parent to child licences have been done according to the terms determined by content creators or distributors.

The purpose of this article is to determine the degree of physical violence received and inflicted over the past two years by a sample of women in prison in their relationships with their partners (N=/213). Over half of the women report having suffered some form of violence at the hands of their partners at some time in their lives. As for physical violence experienced over the past two years, one out of every four women has experienced violence at the hands of her partner. The women in this study rated the act of physical violence they had experienced in the past two years as severe, a term they also used to describe the degree of disturbance, anger and fear they felt after the violent incident. As for the violence the women inflicted on their partners, one out of every four women has inflicted violence on her partner (26.8%) although they rate the most aggressive event during these past two years as slight. After the event, over half the women felt severely disturbed as well as slightly angry and scared.

This paper seeks to analyse the opportunities and potential risks for libraries applying for European support to fund projects regarding digitisation or availability of their already digitised content. The European Commission has a range of specific funding programs devoted to access, use and preservation of digital cultural heritage, so libraries and other “cultural institutions” holding European heritage are the natural applicants for this kind of calls. Sometimes, however, they do not know how to apply and fully understand the advantages and commitments involved. This paper aims to help libraries to understand European funding programs.

The paper has complementary experience with respect to applications and participation in EU‐funded projects, as well as the evaluation of proposals and the reviewing of approved projects. Apart from the lessons drawn from the personal experiences of the paper, the content is based on the most recent documentation and information about the Call For Proposals (CFP) made available by the European Commission.

Competition among proposals for European funding in the context of Digital Libraries (DLs) has grown considerably over the last few years. Therefore, it is essential for potential applicants to ensure the quality of their proposal by matching its content to the objectives of the Call and meeting the relevant evaluation criteria. In addition, the scope of the proposal needs to be embedded within the long‐term research and management strategy of the institutions applying to ensure both a successful application procedure and maximum sustainability of the project.

Apart from the documentation offered by the European Commission and several public reports of consultancy firms, no previous papers have been published which provide an insight into the workflow of the submission and evaluation of proposals for European funding in the domain of Digital Libraries.

The paper seeks to analyze the health of the vocabulary ecosystem in terms of requirements, addressing its various stakeholders such as maintainers of linked open vocabularies, linked data providers who use those vocabularies in their data and memory institutions which, it is hoped, will eventually provide for the long-term preservation of vocabularies.

This paper builds on requirements formulated more tersely in the DCMI generic namespace policy for RDF vocabularies. The examination of requirements for linked open vocabularies focuses primarily on property-and-class vocabularies in RDFS or OWL (sometimes called metadata element sets), with some consideration of SKOS concept schemes and Dublin Core application profiles. It also discusses lessons learned through two years of development of the linked open vocabularies (LOV), of which main features and key findings are described.

Key findings about the current practices of vocabulary managers regarding metadata, policy and versioning are presented, as well as how such practices can be improved to ensure better discoverability and usability of RDF vocabularies. The paper presents new ways to assess the links and dependencies between vocabularies. It also stresses the necessity and importance of a global governance of the ecosystem in which vocabulary managers, standard bodies, and memory institutions should engage.

The current paper is focused on requirements related to a single type of vocabulary but could and should be extended to other types such as thesauri, classifications, and other semantic assets.

Practical technical guidelines and social good practices are proposed for promotion in the Vocabulary Ecosystem (for example, by vocabulary managers).

This paper brings together the research and action of several important actors in the vocabulary management and governance field, and is intended to be the basis of a roadmap for action presented at the Dublin Core conference of September 2013 in Lisbon (DC 2013).

Linked data is gaining great interest in the cultural heritage domain as a new way for publishing, sharing and consuming data. The paper aims to provide a detailed method and MARiMbA a tool for publishing linked data out of library catalogues in the MARC 21 format, along with their application to the catalogue of the National Library of Spain in the datos.bne.es project.

First, the background of the case study is introduced. Second, the method and process of its application are described. Third, each of the activities and tasks are defined and a discussion of their application to the case study is provided.

The paper shows that the FRBR model can be applied to MARC 21 records following linked data best practices, librarians can successfully participate in the process of linked data generation following a systematic method, and data sources quality can be improved as a result of the process.

The paper proposes a detailed method for publishing and linking linked data from MARC 21 records, provides practical examples, and discusses the main issues found in the application to a real case. Also, it proposes the integration of a data curation activity and the participation of librarians in the linked data generation process.

This article aims to summarize the employers' requirements of scientific data specialists and the status quo of LIS education organizations' training system for scientific data specialists. It also focuses on the matching analysis between the course content and the responsibilities as well as requirements of scientific data specialists. Moreover, in order to provide some indications for LIS education of scientific data specialists in China, it presents the training objectives and modes.

Some job portals for librarians and the comprehensive job portals are investigated as information sources and the keywords such as “scientific data management”, “data service”, “data curation”, “e-Science”, “e-Research”, “data specialist” are selected to retrieval library-released job advertisements for scientific data specialists to understand the library's requirements towards scientific data specialists' core capabilities. Meanwhile the course catalogues of all iSchools' web sites are searched directly in order to find if scientific data courses are provided.

Libraries value teamwork ability, communication ability, interpersonal ability and a good use of data curation tools as the core competences for scientific data specialists. Candidates who possess a second advanced degree, who understand libraries, who hold demonstrated knowledge of metadata standards, and who emphasize details, under the same condition, are more likely to be considered first. Libraries do not have a unified title for scientific data specialists yet. The current curriculums of iSchools mainly cover research method, data science, data management and data service, data statistic and analysis, data warehouse, information studies and technologies, and so on.

This unique study explores some required qualifications of science data specialist surveyed by job openings, including the core skills, position requirements, responsibilities of the job, and some qualifications. It also investigates the related curriculum setting of iSchool universities through course descriptions. This study is very useful for curriculum development in Chinese LIS education of scientific data specialists including required core courses and selected electives, and to promote the practice of data service in Chinese academic libraries.