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Reports on a training programme – KVS ‐ INFLIBNET ‐ an in‐service training programme for school librarians on library automation, networking and e‐resources management. The course was of three weeks duration designed for kendriya vidyalaya school library professionals and held in mid 2004.

The purpose of this paper is to know the institutions who are developing electronic theses and dissertations (ETDs) in India, and to compare the ETDs in India based on a predetermined parameter.

The methodology used for this research paper was a descriptive method. The institutional web sites were browsed and searched to collect the data. A relevant literature review was also carried out to describe the current status and other relevant information.

Institutional repositories are a concept gaining movement today. India is moving ahead in this direction and major education and research institutes have already created their own institutional repositories. In analysis and findings, a detailed report of the analysis of data collection and its subsequent interpretations are given.

If anybody would like to develop ETDs they can this overview of all the previous developed ETDs in India. It will be helpful for planning, developing and implementing new ETDs.

This type of research study has not made till now. It is very important to study current and different types of ETD projects in India and its status. The study of special subject repositories is important for the students, scholars and researchers as well as for the LIS professionals.

The purpose of this paper is to critically analyse the Electronic Theses and Dissertation (ETD) repository creation efforts by various institutions in India and also analyse whether the guidelines issued for depositing ETDs by various government bodies in India are sufficient to implement the ETD submission nationwide.

The paper is the result of the analytical evaluation of the Indian digital repositories especially ETD repositories and the guidelines issued by various government bodies for acceptance of ETDs. To obtain a complete picture of the Indian ETD repositories literature review was conducted, browsed the Registry of Open Access Repositories (ROAR) and Directory of Open Access Repositories (OpenDOAR), since these do not include all the Indian ETD repositories snowball technique was followed. Many of the sites were inaccessible during the study, they are discussed either on the basis of the earlier accessed record or the available literature.

Though in India University Grants Commission (UGC, 2005) and other government bodies have issued guidelines for ETD submission and UGC (in 2009) made it mandatory for all the universities to deposit a copy of the thesis submitted, in the National ETD repository, i.e. Shodhganga, yet the universities do not seem very serious about this issue so far. The study of the ETD repositories of most of the Indian universities and higher level institutions reveals that most of them are busy with the government-funded projects of retro-conversion of the PhD theses piled up in their libraries and have not taken sufficient steps for accepting the current ETD and ETD creating facilities for the researchers.

The Indian universities may expedite the process of accepting the current ETDs and plan training and workshops for the researchers, faculty, theses evaluators and librarians to make them aware about their respective responsibilities.

The Indian researches will be accessible globally resulting in the acceptability and implementation of the research findings for the society and will help in avoiding duplication of research, which means judicial utilization of the public funds, as mostly the research in India is funded by the government.

The literature survey about the ETDs in Indian libraries revealed that almost every article describes the availability of the ETDs and define the ETDs decoratively. All the existing repositories are not exhaustive and contain only retro theses, which neither anybody has tried to evaluate nor stressed on the need of starting accepting the current ETDs. This paper analyses the available collections in ETD repositories and policy provisions for ETD acceptance and also tries to identify the unclear issue before the Indian universities regarding accepting current ETDs.

The purpose of this paper is to make a quantitative analysis and compare the scientific productivity in the area of engineering among the BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China) countries.

The data were collected from SCImago. Various parameters such as number of articles and citable articles, world share and rank, citations per paper and h-index, and international collaboration were analyzed.

There was a fluctuation trend in the pattern of international collaboration among the BRIC countries during the period. Among the top countries, China ranked first in the world in terms of number of articles in the field of engineering research, whereas India was at the 8th rank, Russia was at the 12th rank and Brazil was at the 18th rank. Among the BRIC countries, Russia slipped three positions from being at the 7th rank in 1996 to being at the 10th rank in 2016, while others improved their ranks.

The results of this study reveal publication trends and collaboration pattern of BRIC countries in the field of engineering which may be useful for the academic fraternity and decision makers.

The aim of this study was to evaluate the performance of fuel flow processes in a network of eight gas stations, located in the mesoregion of Alto Paranaíba and Triângulo Mineiro.

Two multi-criteria decision support methods were applied, respectively, of a statistical and mathematical nature, namely, Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA). The research method used was quantitative, with a brief complement of qualitative research, and descriptive in purpose, supported by the inductive method. The data collection stage took place with the support of interviews, with the application of a structured questionnaire, and non-probabilistic sampling, for convenience.

It was possible to verify that the gas station that stood out the most was station 2 (GS2), which achieved maximum efficiency, a fact that can be justified by the analysis resulting from the application of PCA, as for the product purchase variable (PP), the GS2 is the one that buys the most fuel, and is also the one with the largest storage capacity (C), and the highest volume of product sales (PS), which suggests signs of balance between supply and demand for this station, justifying its prominence.

The limitations of the study were related to the DEA technique, which requires a number of variables/indicators three times smaller than the number of DMUs considered, and the difficulty in obtaining financial data on the DMUs analyzed. Considering the security and anonymity of the gas station network, it was not possible to use this data.

The performance assessment of fuel flow processes carried out in this study promotes the efficient use of available resources as well as identifying efficient DMUs that represent benchmarks for improving management processes and performance of inefficient DMUs.

From a social perspective, this study promotes the improvement of the quality of flow processes and effective management of the fuel supply chain, ensuring the safe storage and transportation of fuels to customer supply. Performance management in this sector moves other sectors of the economy, since an efficient unit represents a balance between supply and demand, and consequently, boosts the regional economy, promoting economic growth of the population. Hiring qualified labor for this purpose also represents one of the implications of the study. From an environmental perspective, optimizing flow processes generates a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions and encourages the formulation of public policies aimed at consolidating sustainable practices.

Performance management applied to the context of the fuel supply chain is a relevant topic that has been little explored in scientific research, with a low level of information detail. This study using the inductive method allows the generalization and replication of this management pattern in other organizations in the sector in order to increase the efficiency of the fuel distribution system, with the perspective of maximizing outputs and reducing input consumption. In this aspect, the study introduces possibilities for advancement in social and environmental perspectives based on the effective management of fuel logistics.

This paper aims to contextualize the process of public hospital providing services, based on the measurement of the performance of Federal University Hospitals (HUFs) of Brazil, using the technique of multivariate statistics of principal component analysis.

This research presented a descriptive and quantitative character, as well as exploratory purpose and followed the inductive logic, being empirically structured in two stages, that is, the application of principal component analysis (PCA) in four healthcare performance dimensions; subsequently, the full reapplication of principal component analysis in the most highly correlated variables, in module, with the first three main components (PC1, PC2 and PC3).

From the principal component analysis, considering mainly the component I, with twice the explanatory power of the second (PC2) and third components (PC3), it was possible to evidence the efficient or inefficient behavior of the HUFs evaluated, through the production of medical residency, by specialty area. Finally, it was observed the formation of two groups composed of seven and eight hospitals, that is, Groups II and IV, which shows that these groups reflect similarities, with respect to the scores and importance of the variables for both hospitals’ groups.

Among the main limitations, it was observed incomplete data for some HUFs, which made it impossible to search for information to explain and better contextualize certain aspects. More specifically, a limited number of hospitals with complete information was dealt with for 60% of SIMEC/REHUF performance indicators.

The use of PCA multivariate technique was of great contribution to the contextualization of the performance and productivity of homogeneous and autonomous units, represented by the hospitals. It was possible to generate a high quantity of information, to contribute with assumptions to complement the decision-making processes in these organizations.

Development of public policies, with emphasis on hospitals linked to teaching centers represented by university hospitals. The projection of improvements in the reach of the efficiency of the services of assistance to the public health, from the qualified formation of professionals, both to academy, as to clinical practice.

The originality of this paper for the scenarios, Brazilian public health sector and academic area involved the application of a consolidated performance analysis technique, that is, PCA, obtaining a rich work in relation to the extensive exploitation of techniques to support decision-making processes. In addition, the sequence and the way in which the content, formed by object of study and techniques, has been organized, generating a particular scenario for the measurement of performance in hospital organizations.

Cloud computing originated in central data centers that are connected to the backbone of the Internet. The network transport to and from a distant data center incurs long latencies that hinder modern low-latency applications. In order to flexibly support the computing demands of users, cloud computing is evolving toward a continuum of cloud computing resources that are distributed between the end users and a distant data center. The purpose of this review paper is to concisely summarize the state-of-the-art in the evolving cloud computing field and to outline research imperatives.

The authors identify two main dimensions (or axes) of development of cloud computing: the trend toward flexibility of scaling computing resources, which the authors denote as Flex-Cloud, and the trend toward ubiquitous cloud computing, which the authors denote as Ubi-Cloud. Along these two axes of Flex-Cloud and Ubi-Cloud, the authors review the existing research and development and identify pressing open problems.

The authors find that extensive research and development efforts have addressed some Ubi-Cloud and Flex-Cloud challenges resulting in exciting advances to date. However, a wide array of research challenges remains open, thus providing a fertile field for future research and development.

This review paper is the first to define the concept of the Ubi-Flex-Cloud as the two-dimensional research and design space for cloud computing research and development. The Ubi-Flex-Cloud concept can serve as a foundation and reference framework for planning and positioning future cloud computing research and development efforts.

The purpose of this paper is to identify student clusters based on patterns of behavioural, cognitive, emotional, collaborative and social engagement in virtual classrooms, within the context of higher education. The study also attempts to explore the differences amongst the student clusters with respect to various motivating and demotivating teaching behaviours.

The study relies on the self-determination theory to describe the dynamics related to various motivating and demotivating teaching behaviours and five different dimensions of student engagement in virtual classrooms. The data were collected from a convenience sample of 831 students from higher educational institutions in the Delhi – National Capital Region of India. Cluster analysis was performed to classify students into mutually exclusive groups based on five student engagement dimensions.

The findings revealed three student clusters: ‘fully-engaged’, ‘externally-engaged’ and ‘individually-engaged’ students. The findings also provided insights into varied correlations between specific dimensions of motivating/demotivating teaching behaviours and student engagement.

Considering the multi-dimensionality of student engagement as well as teaching behaviours, the study adopts a person-centred approach to understand different clusters of students in virtual classrooms and investigate the relationship between teaching behaviours and student engagement dimensions.

Major public cloud providers, such as AWS, Azure or Google, offer seamless experiences for infrastructure as a service (IaaS), platform as a service (PaaS) and software as a service (SaaS). With the emergence of the public cloud's vast usage, administrators must be able to have a reliable method to provide the seamless experience that a public cloud offers on a smaller scale, such as a private cloud. When a smaller deployment or a private cloud is needed, OpenStack can meet the goals without increasing cost or sacrificing data control.

To demonstrate these enablement goals of resiliency and elasticity in IaaS and PaaS, the authors design a private distributed system cloud platform using OpenStack and its core services of Nova, Swift, Cinder, Neutron, Keystone, Horizon and Glance on a five-node deployment.

Through the demonstration of dynamically adding an IaaS node, pushing the deployment to its physical and logical limits, and eventually crashing the deployment, this paper shows how the PackStack utility facilitates the provisioning of an elastic and resilient OpenStack-based IaaS platform that can be used in production if the deployment is kept within designated boundaries.

The authors adopt the multinode-capable PackStack utility in favor of an all-in-one OpenStack build for a true demonstration of resiliency, elasticity and scalability in a small-scale IaaS. An all-in-one deployment is generally used for proof-of-concept deployments and is not easily scaled in production across multiple nodes. The authors demonstrate that combining PackStack with the multi-node design is suitable for smaller-scale production IaaS and PaaS deployments.

The recent spate of eminence received by the MOOCs (massive open online courses) from media to academia is revolutionary in higher education. MOOCs are a disruptive technological innovation which offers open learning with the aid of the internet and delivered by the faculty of reputed institutions, globally. Since Coursera being one such significant platform, its exploration would display the broader picture of MOOCs. As a result, studying it from various dynamics has been the motive of the current endeavour.

The quantitative study of the collected data was applied with help of descriptive research methodology to measure the contribution of the top six countries namely US, China, Japan, Germany, India and UK. All these six countries were selected on the basis of GDP (harvested from official website World Bank – data.worldbank.org/ to Coursera––an online platform providing MOOCs. The involvement of these selected countries was gauged (from the official website of Coursera https://www.coursera.org/) in terms of number, type of contributing institutions, number of courses offered by those institutions, type of courses offered, number of instructors and instructor gender ratio.

The findings reveal that the United States (US) is the top contributor in terms of partner institutes (97), courses (Specialization courses – 1,267 and degree courses– 40) and number of instructors (1,290). Interestingly, it was also observed that universities are the major contributor institutes in all six studied countries. Most of the institutes provide specialization courses while a very few provide degree courses. A large number of instructors are involved for imparting these courses online. Instructor gender ratio on average is 2:1 (male: female). It was also observed that there is usually a specific common time of starting courses on Coursera.

Online platforms are the main delivery points for MOOCs; therefore, vibrancy and articulacy of such platforms make this innovation a success, and examining such a platform which exhibits such characteristics would present an overall picture of its functionality, development, evolution and future expansion of the innovation (MOOCs).