Themes in landscape architecture publishing: Past trends, future needs

Many scholars acknowledge the need for rigorous research in landscape architecture to improve practice and teaching, and several recent studies have explored research trends in the discipline. This study continues this exploration by reviewing the articles published in the three prominent English- language landscape architecture journals: Landscape Journal, Landscape Review, and the Journal of Landscape Architecture. Specifically, this study analyzes the abstracts from 441 research articles to determine specific themes and publishing trends over 31 years (1982–2013). Findings indicate that “history” is by far the most prominent research theme, followed by “social and cultural processes and issues” and “aesthetics.” Several themes—such as “sustainability and green infrastructure,” “participation and collaboration,” and “research methods and methodologies”—have become more prominent in recent years. However, topics of current social and political concern—such as “climate change,” “active living,” “energy,” and “health”—are not yet prominent themes in the research literature, and could be key areas for future contribution. With the exception of a few themes, findings also suggest a moderate degree of alignment between research and practice. The article concludes with recommendations for future areas of research that will better position landscape architecture as a research- oriented profession with broad social relevance.

An account and analysis of the implementation of various ebook business models at QUT, Australia

QUT (Queensland University of Technology) is a leading university based in the city of Brisbane, Queensland, Australia and is a selectively research intensive university with 2,500 higher degree research students and an overall student population of 45,000 students. The transition from print to online resources is largely completed and the library now provides access to 450,000 print books, 1,000 print journals, 600,000 ebooks, 120,000 ejournals and 100,000 online videos. The ebook collection is now used three times as much as the print book collection. This paper focuses on QUT Library’s ebook strategy and the challenges of building and managing a rapidly growing collection of ebooks using a range of publishers, platforms, and business and financial models. The paper provides an account of QUT Library’s experiences in using Patron Driven Acquisition (PDA) using eBook Library (EBL); the strategic procurement of publisher and subject collections by lease and outright purchase models, the more recent transition to Evidence Based Selection (EBS) options provided by some publishers, and its piloting of etextbook models. The paper provides an in-depth analysis of each of these business models at QUT, focusing on access verses collection development, usage, cost per use, and value for money.

Steven M. Lowenstein Collection - Addenda. 1960s-2007

The Steven Lowenstein Collections documents professional activities of Steven Lowenstein, writer, researcher, historian, and teacher. Documents comprising the collection reflect his interests in a wide spectrum of topics related to Jews and Judaism, such as modernity and tradition and their influence on the religion and common folks; Berlin Jews of the upper strata; similarities and differences between agrarian/rural and urban Jews; popular and official Judaism; secular and religious Jews; and other Jewish related topics. However, there is a very small amount of materials related to his professional activities other than research and writing.

Invisible opportunities and irreversible trends

Small firms are always vulnerable to complex technological change that may render their existing business model obsolete. This paper emphasises the need to understand how the Internet's ubiquitous World Wide Web is impacting on their operating environments. Consideration of evolutionary theory and the absorptive capacity construct provides the foundation for discussion of how learning and discovery take place within individuals, firms and the environments that interact with. Small firms, we argue, face difficulties identifying what routines and competencies are best aligned with the seemingly invisible dominant designs that support pursuit of new enterprise in web-impacted environments. We argue that such difficulties largely relate to an inability to acquire external knowledge and the subsequent reliance on existing internal selection processes that may reinforce the known, at the expense of the unknown. The paper concludes with consideration as to how managers can overcome the expected difficulties through the development of internal routines that support the continual search, evaluation and acquisition of specific external knowledge.

Bombs away: Visual thinking and students’ engagement in design studios contexts

In design studio, sketching or visual thinking is part of processes that assist students to achieve final design solutions. At QUT’s First and Third Year industrial design studio classes we engage in a variety of teaching pedagogies from which we identify ‘Concept Bombs’ as instrumental in the development of students’ visual thinking and reflective design process, and also as a vehicle to foster positive student engagement. In First year studios our Concept Bombs’ consist of 20 minute individual design tasks focusing on rapid development of initial concept designs and free-hand sketching. In Third Year studios we adopt a variety of formats and different timing, combining individual and team based tasks. Our experience and surveys tell us that students value intensive studio activities especially when combined with timely assessment and feedback. While conventional longer-duration design projects are essential for allowing students to engage with the full depth and complexity of the design process, short and intensive design activities introduce variety to the learning experience and enhance student engagement. This paper presents a comparative analysis of First and Third Year students’ Concept Bomb sketches to describe the types of design knowledge embedded in them, a discussion of limitations and opportunities of this pedagogical technique, as well as considerations for future development of studio based tasks of this kind as design pedagogies in the midst of current university education trends.

E-book monopolies and the law

This article will examine the legality of the digital rights management (‘DRM’) measures used by the major e-book publishers and device manufacturers in the United States, European Union and Australia not only to enforce their intellectual property rights but also to create monopolistic content silos, restrict interoperability and affect the ability for users to use the content they have bought in the way they wish. The analysis will then proceed to the recent competition investigations in the US and EU over price-fixing in e-book markets, and the current litigation against Amazon in the US for an alleged abuse of its dominant position. A final point will be made on possible responses in Australia to these issues taking into account the jurisprudence on DRM in other scenarios.

A Method for Comparing Scholarly Journals as Service Providers to Authors

When authors of scholarly articles decide where to submit their manuscripts for peer review and eventual publication, they often base their choice of journals on very incomplete information abouthow well the journals serve the authors’ purposes of informing about their research and advancing their academic careers. The purpose of this study was to develop and test a new method for benchmarking scientific journals, providing more information to prospective authors. The method estimates a number of journal parameters, including readership, scientific prestige, time from submission to publication, acceptance rate and service provided by the journal during the review and publication process. Data directly obtainable from the web, data that can be calculated from such data, data obtained from publishers and editors, and data obtained using surveys with authors are used in the method, which has been tested on three different sets of journals, each from a different discipline. We found a number of problems with the different data acquisition methods, which limit the extent to which the method can be used. Publishers and editors are reluctant to disclose important information they have at hand (i.e. journal circulation, web downloads, acceptance rate). The calculation of some important parameters (for instance average time from submission to publication, regional spread of authorship) can be done but requires quite a lot of work. It can be difficult to get reasonable response rates to surveys with authors. All in all we believe that the method we propose, taking a “service to authors” perspective as a basis for benchmarking scientific journals, is useful and can provide information that is valuable to prospective authors in selected scientific disciplines.

Essays on Platforms: Business Strategies, Regulation and Policy in Telecommunications, Media and Technology Industries

The growth of the information economy has been stellar in the last decade. General-purpose technologies such as the computer and the Internet have promoted productivity growth in a large number of industries. The effect on telecommunications, media and technology industries has been particularly strong. These industries include mobile telecommunications, printing and publishing, broadcasting, software, hardware and Internet services. There have been large structural changes, which have led to new questions on business strategies, regulation and policy. This thesis focuses on four such questions and answers them by extending the theoretical literature on platforms. The questions (with short answers) are: (i) Do we need to regulate how Internet service providers discriminate between content providers? (Yes.) (ii) What are the welfare effects of allowing consumers to pay to remove advertisements from advertisement-supported products?(Ambiguous, but those watching ads are worse off.) (iii) Why are some markets characterized by open platforms, extendable by third parties, and some by closed platforms, which are not extendable? (It is a trade-off between intensified competition for consumers and benefits from third parties) (iv) Do private platform providers allow third parties to access their platform when it is socially desirable? (No.)

Good practice guidance for library and information professionals - moving towards accessible e-book platforms

Good practice guidance for publishers and procurers of e-book platforms based on the benefits and barriers identified by robust testing using real people with disabilities

Global and local challenges for best practices in assessment. The 9th Conference on the International Test Commission. Book of abstracts

The 9th International Test Commission Conference (ITC) took place at the Miramar Palace in San Sebastian, Spain, between the 2nd and 5th of July, 2014. The Conference was titled, “Global and Local Challenges for Best Practices in Assessment.” The International Test Commission, ITC (www.intestcom.org), is an association of national psychological associations, test commissions, publishers, and other organizations, as well as individuals who are committed to the promotion of effective testing and assessment policies and to the proper development, evaluation, and uses of educational and psychological instruments. The ITC facilitates the exchange of information among members and stimulates their cooperation on problems related to the construction, distribution, and uses of psychological and educational tests and other psychodiagnostic tools. This volume contains the abstracts of the contributions presented at the 9th International Test Commission Conference. The four themes of the Conference were closely linked to the goals of the ITC: - Challenges and Opportunities in International Assessment. - Application of New Technoloogies and New Psychometric Models in Testing. - Standards and Guidelines for Best Testing Practices. - Testing in Multilingual and Multicultural Contexts.

Collaboration on procurement of e-content between the National Health Service and higher education in the UK

Urquhart, C. J., Cox, A. M.& Spink, S. (2007). Collaboration on procurement of e-content between the National Health Service and higher education in the UK. Interlending & Document Supply, 35(3), 164-170. Sponsorship: JISC, LKDN

Amplifying applied game development and uptake

The established (digital) leisure game industry is historically one dominated by large international hardware vendors (e.g. Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo), major publishers and supported by a complex network of development studios, distributors and retailers. New modes of digital distribution and development practice are challenging this business model and the leisure games industry landscape is one experiencing rapid change. The established (digital) leisure games industry, at least anecdotally, appears reluctant to participate actively in the applied games sector (Stewart et al., 2013). There are a number of potential explanations as to why this may indeed be the case including ; A concentration on large-scale consolidation of their (proprietary) platforms, content, entertainment brand and credibility which arguably could be weakened by association with the conflicting notion of purposefulness (in applied games) in market niches without clear business models or quantifiable returns on investment. In contrast, the applied games industry exhibits the characteristics of an emerging, immature industry namely: weak interconnectedness, limited knowledge exchange, an absence of harmonising standards, limited specialisations, limited division of labour and arguably insufficient evidence of the products efficacies (Stewart et al., 2013; Garcia Sanchez, 2013) and could, arguably, be characterised as a dysfunctional market. To test these assertions the Realising an Applied Gaming Ecosystem (RAGE) project will develop a number of self contained gaming assets to be actively employed in the creation of a number of applied games to be implemented and evaluated as regional pilots across a variety of European educational, training and vocational contexts. RAGE is a European Commission Horizon 2020 project with twenty (pan European) partners from industry, research and education with the aim of developing, transforming and enriching advanced technologies from the leisure games industry into self-contained gaming assets (i.e. solutions showing economic value potential) that could support a variety of stakeholders including teachers, students, and, significantly, game studios interested in developing applied games. RAGE will provide these assets together with a large quantity of high-quality knowledge resources through a self-sustainable Ecosystem, a social space that connects research, the gaming industries, intermediaries, education providers, policy makers and end-users in order to stimulate the development and application of applied games in educational, training and vocational contexts. The authors identify barriers (real and perceived) and opportunities facing stakeholders in engaging, exploring new emergent business models ,developing, establishing and sustaining an applied gaming eco system in Europe.

Charabanc, cultural capital and the men of recognised credit

This paper compares the cultural legacy of the all-female Charabanc with that of Field Day, its fellow counterpart in the Irish Theatre touring movement in the 1980s. It suggests that a conscious awareness amongst the all-male Field Day board of successful writers and directors of what Bourdieu has called 'cultural capital' is implicated in the enduring authority of the work of that company within the history of Irish theatre. Conversely the paper considers if the populist Charabanc, in its steadfast refusal to engage with the hierarchies of academia and publishing, was too neglectful of the cultural capital which it accrued in its heyday and has thus been party to its own occlusion from that same history.

Decadent Conservatism: Politics and Aesthetics in The Senate

The relationship between late-Victorian Decadence and Aestheticism and politics has long been vexed. This article explores the hitherto under-explored confluence of conservatism and avant-garde literature in the period by introducing The Senate, a Tory-Decadent journal that ran from 1894-7. While Decadent authors occupied various political positions, this article argues that The Senate offers a crucial link between conservatism and Decadence The article presents the journal in its political and publishing context, outlining its editorial position on such issues as the Liberal Unionist-Conservative coalition governments, Britain's relationship with Europe and the threat of ‘State Socialism’, as well as its valorisation of Bollingbroke and eighteenth-century Toryism, and its relationship to, and difference from, key Decadent journals the Yellow Book and The Savoy. It then goes on to articulate its relationship to Decadence by focussing on the presence of Paul Verlaine in its pages and its vitriolic response to the press coverage of Oscar Wilde's trials. The article concludes by exploring the surprising wake of The Senate, briefly tracing the editors' influence in the development of Modernism and links with the journal BLAST.