Identification of technological districts: the case of Spain

Paper submitted to the 51st European Congress of the Regional Science Association International, 37th Spanish Regional Science Association Conference, Barcelona, August 30-September 3, 2011.

La cuota de mercado como indicador de competitividad en los destinos turísticos: sentido y limitaciones

La cuota de mercado es el indicador más difundido en el análisis de la competitividad empresarial para todo tipo de bienes y servicios. Sin embargo, su uso en turismo está sometido a una amplia controversia, especialmente cuando el objeto de estudio es la competitividad de los destinos turísticos. Ello es debido a que objetivos de maximización de esta variable en la planificación, pueden conllevar la implementación de políticas de crecimiento comprometedoras de la sostenibilidad económica y ambiental de los citados destinos. Teniendo en cuenta estas consideraciones, en el presente trabajo se discute el uso, validez y limitaciones de la cuota de mercado como indicador de la competitividad de los destinos turísticos.

Comparison among monitoring strategies to assess water flow dynamic and soil hydraulic properties in agricultural soils

Irrigated agriculture is usually performed in semi-arid regions despite scarcity of water resources. Therefore, optimal irrigation management by monitoring the soil is essential, and assessing soil hydraulic properties and water flow dynamics is presented as a first measure. For this purpose, the control of volumetric water content, θ, and pressure head, h, is required. This study adopted two types of monitoring strategies in the same experimental plot to control θ and h in the vadose zone: i) non-automatic and more time-consuming; ii) automatic connected to a datalogger. Water flux was modelled with Hydrus-1D using the data collected from both acquisition strategies independently (3820 daily values for the automatic; less than 1000 for the non-automatic). Goodness-of-fit results reported a better adjustment in case of automatic sensors. Both model outputs adequately predicted the general trend of θ and h, but with slight differences in computed annual drainage (711 mm and 774 mm). Soil hydraulic properties were inversely estimated from both data acquisition systems. Major differences were obtained in the saturated volumetric water content, θs, and the n and α van Genuchten model shape parameters. Saturated hydraulic conductivity, Ks, shown lower variability with a coefficient of variation range from 0.13 to 0.24 for the soil layers defined. Soil hydraulic properties were better assessed through automatic data acquisition as data variability was lower and accuracy was higher.

Empowering global software development with business intelligence

Context: Global Software Development (GSD) allows companies to take advantage of talent spread across the world. Most research has been focused on the development aspect. However, little if any attention has been paid to the management of GSD projects. Studies report a lack of adequate support for management’s decisions made during software development, further accentuated in GSD since information is scattered throughout multiple factories, stored in different formats and standards. Objective: This paper aims to improve GSD management by proposing a systematic method for adapting Business Intelligence techniques to software development environments. This would enhance the visibility of the development process and enable software managers to make informed decisions regarding how to proceed with GSD projects. Method: A combination of formal goal-modeling frameworks and data modeling techniques is used to elicitate the most relevant aspects to be measured by managers in GSD. The process is described in detail and applied to a real case study throughout the paper. A discussion regarding the generalisability of the method is presented afterwards. Results: The application of the approach generates an adapted BI framework tailored to software development according to the requirements posed by GSD managers. The resulting framework is capable of presenting previously inaccessible data through common and specific views and enabling data navigation according to the organization of software factories and projects in GSD. Conclusions: We can conclude that the proposed systematic approach allows us to successfully adapt Business Intelligence techniques to enhance GSD management beyond the information provided by traditional tools. The resulting framework is able to integrate and present the information in a single place, thereby enabling easy comparisons across multiple projects and factories and providing support for informed decisions in GSD management.

La política editorial antifraude de las revistas científicas españolas e iberoamericanas del JCR en Ciencias Sociales

El proceso de publicación de un artículo debe basarse en la credibilidad, la verdad y la autenticidad. La inclusión de normas éticas en la política editorial científica se concibe como una medida preventiva y disuasoria de conductas inapropiadas. Dada la escasez de estudios sobre ética y publicación científica en Ciencias Sociales y, en particular, en España e Iberoamérica, esta investigación analiza la política editorial antifraude de las revistas españolas y latinoamericanas indexadas en el JCR en Ciencias Sociales (2014). Para cumplir nuestro objetivo, se utilizaron como muestra objeto de estudio 104 revistas y en las instrucciones a autores se examinaron una serie de principios de actuación ética: 1) Derechos de las personas que participan en la investigación; 2) Protección del bienestar de los animales objeto de experimentación; 3) Conflicto de interés; 4) Envío y publicación de manuscritos. Nuestros resultados apuntan que el carácter inédito de la investigación, así como la prohibición del envío simultáneo de los trabajos a otras revistas son los temas que aparecen con más frecuencia. Pese al intento de sociedades de edición científica como ICMJE y COPE por estandarizar los asuntos que afectan al fraude en la ciencia, su incidencia es exigua en las publicaciones objeto de estudio. Dada la dispersión normativa analizada, se retoma la necesidad detectada por otros autores de desarrollar un código ético uniforme para las disciplinas de Ciencias Sociales.