All posts by VPInstitute

Mapping Case-Based Learning Research from 2014 to 2024: a Bibliometric and Network Analysis

Abstract

Case-based learning (CBL) is a globally recognized pedagogical approach known for
fostering critical thinking, collaborative problem-solving, and active engagement
among learners. Despite its implementation across multiple educational levels and dis
ciplines worldwide, the global research landscape of CBL remains underexplored. To
address this gap, a comprehensive overview is needed to map the evolution of CBL
research, delineate its geographical and institutional hubs, and identify dominant the
matic areas. This study aims to map global research on CBL. We used the Preferred
Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses, bibliometrics, and network
analyses to evaluate 883 articles indexed in the Web of Science Core Collection
between January 2014 and August 2024. Our findings indicate a relevant increase in
annual publications over time. The main author keywords are CBL, medical education,
and problem-based learning. The main Research Areas are Education & Educational
Research, followed by General & Internal Medicine, and Healthcare Sciences &
Services. The United States, China, and Canada are the most productive countries,
while the University of California, the University of Toronto, and Harvard University are
the top organizations contributing to the field. This study provides a general under
standing of the global research landscape on CBL, offering important insights for
future studies and fostering research collaboration between organizations around the
world

For FULL-TEXT: Mapping Case-Based Learning Research from 2014to 2024: a Bibliometric and Network Analysis

Author(s): Fabio Batista Mota, Claúdio Damasceno Pinto, Luiza Amara Maciel
Braga, Renato Matos Lopes

Organization(s): Oswaldo Cruz Foundation, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil;

Source: Cogent Education

Year: 2025

International Boundary Organisationsand the Knowledge-Governance Interface

Abstract

Deliberation on Science, Technology, and Innovation (STI) for global grand challenges
takes place within International Organisations, where complexity, uncertainty, and
value divergence complicate traditional notions of the science-policy interface. This
thesis argues that the Knowledge-Governance Interface (KGI) better captures the
reciprocal and power-laden relations between knowledge and decision making. It
develops an analytical framework for studying KGIs within International Boundary
Organisations (IBOs), institutions that mediate between communities through the co
production of knowledge and social order. The framework is applied, through mixed
methods, to negotiations under the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) on
benefit-sharing for Digital Sequence Information (DSI), to examine how divergences
emerge, are mediated and negotiated within an IBO. The empirical chapters
conceptualise DSI as a boundary object whose interpretive flexibility enables
coordination across divergent communities, and trace its emergence and dynamics via
documentary and bibliometric analysis. Subsequent chapters use participant
observation and 35 interviews to show that divergences in knowledge and values
surface through the provision of a deliberative forum, and are shaped by uneven
knowledge politics. Mediation occurs not through deliberative consensus, but through
layered accessibility, the use of DSI as a strategic boundary object, and broader
organisational dynamics, producing anticipatory responses in the wider knowledge
control regime. Findings identify dilemmas that IBOs must navigate, including
balancing broad participation with focused consensus building, and leveraging
strategic ambiguity while anticipating the need for an eventual definition of DSI, each
shaped by formal and informal institutional processes. Despite these tensions, IBOs
remain imperfect yet essential venues for deliberation on STI, enabling stakeholders to
articulate concerns, negotiate conflicts, and shape governance regimes. Accordingly,
the thesis recommends reflexive and anticipatory workshops focused on the identified
dynamics and dilemmas, together with capacity building for policy-relevant knowledge
production on DSI. It makes three contributions. It proposes the KGI analytical
framework, demonstrates its empirical utility, and offers practical insights for
international STI governance.

For FULL-TEXT: International Boundary Organisations and the Knowledge-Governance Interface

Author(s): Adam R. McCarthy

Organization(s): The University of Manchester

Source: A thesis submitted to The University of Manchester for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

Year: 2025

Biogas Upgrading to Biomethane in Brazil: Networks, Technologies, and Industrial Pathways

Abstract

Waste management is a critical global challenge for sustainability, requiring solutions that integrate efficient treatment, energy generation, and value recovery. This study analyzes the evolution of the biogas sector in Brazil, focusing on the integration of waste sources and industrial plants to produce biogas and biomethane. Using a scientometric approach, we analyzed 3289 peer-reviewed articles and 248 patent documents, to map knowledge production in Brazil on biogas and biomethane, identifying research themes, collaboration patterns, and technological focus in upgrading. We then integrated field evidence, industry datasets, and technical reports to characterize installed capacity, feedstocks, and the upgrading routes currently adopted to produce biomethane. Results show that the number of biogas plants in Brazil increased from 2 in 2003 to 755 in 2021, with annual production rising from 1.09 million Nm³ in 2003 to 2.3 billion Nm³ in 2021. In 2023, annual production reached approximately 2.9 billion Nm³. biomethane is obtained by upgrading biogas, whereby major contaminants are removed and its heating value increases. Seventeen biomethane plants were identified, with seven authorized by the National Petroleum Agency (ANP) and projected capacity of 547,481 Nm³ day⁻¹ in 2024. In Brazil, co-location of biogas plants with waste sources predominates, optimizing logistics and supporting decentralized energy solutions. Collaboration among universities, industry, utilities, and regulators can expand the use of biomethane in small and medium industries and reduce the volume of waste still disposed of in open dumpsites.

For FULL-TEXT: Biogas upgrading to biomethane in Brazil: Networks, technologies, and industrial pathways – ScienceDirect

Author(s): Carolina da Silveira Bueno, José Maria Ferreira Jardim da Silveira, Bruna de Souza Moraes, Telma Teixeira Franco 

Organization(s): University of Campinas

Source: Sustainable Futures

Year: 2025

Identification of technology frontiers of artificial intelligence-assisted pathology based on patent citation network (FULL-TEXT)

Patents related to artificial intelligence-assisted pathology were searched and collected from the Derwent Innovation Index (DII), which were imported into Derwent Data Analyzer (DDA, Clarivate Derwent, New York, NY, USA) for authority control, and imported into the freely available computer program Ucinet 6 for drawing the patent citation network. The patent citation network according to the citation relationship could describe the technology development context in the field of artificial intelligence-assisted pathology. The patent citations were extracted from the collected patent data, selected highly cited patents to form a co-occurrence matrix, and built a patent citation network based on the co-occurrence matrix in each period. Text clustering is an unsupervised learning method, an important method in text mining, where similar documents are grouped into clusters. The similarity between documents are determined by calculating the distance between them, and the two documents with the closest distance are combined. The method of text clustering was used to identify the technology frontiers based on the patent citation network, which was according to co-word analysis of the title and abstract of the patents in this field.

For FULL-TEXT https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0273355

Author(s): Ting Zhang,Juan Chen,Yan Lu,Xiaoyi Yang,Zhaolian Ouyang
Organization(s):Institute of Medical Information & Library, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences and Peking Union Medical College
Source: PloSone
Year: 2022

Twenty years of US nanopatenting: Maintenance renewal scoring as an indicator of patent value (FULL-TEXT)

This paper introduces a new measure of patent value – Maintenance Renewal Score (MRSc) – reflecting assignee valuing the patent by paying successive renewal fees. We generate MRSc’s for nanotechnology patents issued by the US Patent Office from 1999 through 2009, with US assignees and US inventors. Patenting increases over this period, coincident with increased US funding of nanotechnology R&D. We compare maintenance rates over the period, and against a comparison set of all 1999 USPTO grants to US inventors/assignees. We find differences in propensity to maintain the nanopatents by institution type, technological sector, and patent complexity.

  • We introduce a new measure of patent quality – Maintenance Renewal Score.
  • We report differences in propensity to maintain US patents.
  • The US National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI) begins in 2003.
  • US Nanotechnology patenting increases from 1999 to 2009 as NNI takes place.
  • 52.5% of 1999 US patents maintain to full term; 1999–2009 US nanopatents, 40.5%.

For FULL-TEXT https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wpi.2023.102178

Author(s): Alan L. Porter, Mark Markley, Richard Snead, Nils C. Newman
Organization: Search Technology, Inc.
Source: World Patent Information
Year: 2023

Data Analytics Research in Nonprofit Organisations: A Bibliometric Analysis

Profitable organisations that applied data analytics have obtained a double-digit improvement in reducing costs, predicting demands, and enhancing decision-making. However, in nonprofit organisations (NPOs), applying data analysis can interpret and discover more patterns of donors, volunteers, and forecasting future funds, gifts and grants. To uncover the usage of data analytics in different NPOs and understand its contribution, this article presents a bibliometric analysis of 2673 related publications to reveal the research landscape of data analytics applied in NPOs. Through a co-term analysis and scientific evolutionary pathways analysis, we profile the associations between data analysis techniques and NPOs and additionally identify the research topic changes in this field over time. The results yield us three major insights: (1) Robust and classic statistical methods-based data analysis techniques are dominantly prevalent in the NPOs field through all the time; (2) Healthcare and public affairs are two crucial sectors that involve data analytics to support decision-making and problem-solving; (3) Artificial Intelligence (AI)-based data analytics is a recently emerging trending, especially in the healthcare-related sector; however, it is still at an immature stage, and more efforts are needed to nourish its development.

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-1520-8_61

Author(s): Idrees Alsolbi, Mengjia Wu, Yi Zhang, Siamak Tafavogh, Ashish Sinha, Mukesh Prasad
Organization(s): University of Technology Sydney
Source: Pattern Recognition and Data Analysis with Applications. Lecture Notes in Electrical Engineering
Year: 2022

Technological Convergence in Manufacturing: Research, Adoption and Policy (full-text, dissertation)

Author: Tausif A. Bordoloi
Organization: University of Manchester
Source: A thesis submitted to the University of Manchester for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) in the Faculty of Humanities, Alliance Manchester Business School
Year: 2022

For FULL-TEXT https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/files/234004561/FULL_TEXT.PDF

The notion of cyber-physical convergence, which indicates the pervasive integration of digital
technologies in manufacturing, has rapidly gained prominence around the world because of its
potential to accelerate economic productivity gains. A question of significance but relatively
little empirical scrutiny is how cyber-physical convergence is characterised and realised in
innovation generation, innovation adoption and innovation policy. These issues are addressed
in this doctoral thesis, resulting in three journal-format papers.

The first paper characterises and operationalises the notion of cyber-physical convergence, and
then measures the growth and trajectories of scholarly research associated with the notion by
employing text-mining and bibliometric approaches. The second paper is an inductive case
study on the relative influences of geographical and non-geographical proximity factors in the
adoption of digital technologies by small- and medium-sized automotive and aerospace firms
(SMEs) co-localised in North West England. The third paper is an integrative literature review
of three industrial policy initiatives – Germany’s Industrie 4.0, Smart Manufacturing in the
U.S. and the High Value Manufacturing in the U.K., to analyse the framing and execution of
policy vision to support specific types of technologies underpinning convergence.
There are three main contributions of this thesis: first, it systematically delineates the cyberphysical convergence research domain into five data-centric capabilities – namely, Monitoring, Analytics, Modelling and Simulation, Transmission and Security, and sheds light on national research performance indicators for the period 2010–2019; second, it provides micro-level evidence indicating that geographical proximity among automotive and aerospace SMEs and also other types of economic actors is not the leading factor in technology adoption, rather
institutional and cognitive (knowledge) factors play a more prominent role; and third, it offers
insights pertaining to policy design and implementation, with Industrie 4.0 being more explicit
and comprehensive than Smart Manufacturing and High Value Manufacturing in its framing,
usage and implementation of a vision to support specific types of technologies. These contributions allow deriving policy and managerial implications regarding: the significance of data in manufacturing and funding data-centric capabilities, including questions of trade-offs between funding specific capabilities; the importance of interactions with non-
localised actors for the purpose of technology adoption; and the consideration and systematic
execution of policy vision to support and accelerate the realisation of cyber-physical
convergence.

Patent intelligence of RNA viruses: Implications for combating emerging and re-emerging RNA virus based infectious diseases (Full-Text)

The recent outbreak of one of the RNA viruses (2019-nCoV) has affected most of the population and the fatalities reported may label it as a modern-day scourge. Active research on RNA virus infections and vaccine development had more commercial impact which leads to an increase in patent filings. Patents are a goldmine of information whose mining yields crucial technological inputs for further research. In this research article, we have investigated both the patent applications and granted patents, to identify the technological trends and their impact on 2019-nCoV infection using biotechnology-related keywords such as genes, proteins, nucleic acid etc. related to the RNA virus infection. In our research, patent analysis was majorly focused on prospecting for patent data related to the RNA virus infections. Our patent analysis specifically identified spike protein (S protein) and nucleocapsid proteins (N proteins) as the most actively researched macromolecules for vaccine and/or drug development for diagnosis and treatment of RNA virus based infectious diseases. The outcomes of this patent intelligence study will be useful for the researchers who are actively working in the area of vaccine or drug development for RNA virus-based infections including 2019-nCoV and other emerging and re-emerging viral infections in the near future.

For FULL-TEXT https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijbiomac.2022.08.169

Author(s): Pratap Devarapalli, Pragati Kumari, Seema Soni, Vandana Mishra, Saurabh Yadav
Organization(s): University of Tasmania, Queensland University of Technology, H.N.B. Garhwal University
Source: International Journal of Biological Macromolecules
Year: 2022

Supply Chain Management: A Review and Bibliometric Analysis (full-text)

Supply chain management (SCM), which generally refers to horizontal integration management, has steadily become the core competitiveness of company rivalry and an essential approach to developing national comprehensive and national strength since the end of the 20th century due to the numerous needs arising from a competitive international economy. Manufacturers develop a community of interest by forming long-term strategic partnerships with suppliers and vendors throughout the supply chain. This paper defines supply chain management by reviewing the existing literature and discusses the current state of supply chain management research, as well as prospective research directions. Specifically, we conducted a bibliometric analysis of the influential studies of SCM in terms of various aspects, such as research areas, journals, countries/regions, institutions, authors and corresponding authors, most cited publications, and author keywords, based on the 8998 reviews and articles collected from the SCI and SSCI database of the Web of Science (WoS) between 2010 and 2020. The results show that the major research areas were Management (3071, 34.13%), Operations Research & Management Science (2680, 29.78%), and Engineering, Industrial (1854, 20.60%) with TP and TPR%. The most productive journal and institution were J. Clean Prod and Hong Kong Polytech Univ with a TP of 554 and 238, respectively. China, USA, and UK were the top three contributing countries. Furthermore, “sustainability”, “green supply chain (management)”, and “sustainable supply chain (management)” were the most popular author keywords in recent three years and since 2010, apart from the author keywords of SCM. When combined with the most cited articles in recent years, the application of block chain and Industry 4.0 in supply chain management increased rapidly and generated great attention

FOR FULL-TEXT https://doi.org/10.3390/pr10091681

Author(s): Hui Fang, Fei Fang, Qiang Hu, Yuehua Wan
Organization(s): Zhejiang University of Technology, Shanghai University of Finance and Economics
Source: Processes
Year: 2022

Analysis and Prediction of Topic Research of Transgenic Papers Based on Knowledge Graph (FULL-TEXT)

Citespace and other visualization software were used to analyze the knowledge graph of relevant pieces of literature on GM research in the past decade, and to sort out the number trend, core authors, research institutions, number of core journals published, and keyword co-occurrence graph of core research literature in gm research in the past decade. The analysis shows that the research interest in TRANSGENIC has changed in recent ten years. The research interest in the United States, China, and other countries is similar to the contribution of the sun, moon, and stars, while the major institutions led by the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, China Agricultural University, and Harvard University are more willing to publish their research results in Plos One. Research focuses on transgenic rice, Alzheimer’s disease, biochemistry, and molecular biology, in addition, future research will focus on transgenic plants, Alzheimer’s disease, and other aspects.

For FULL-TEXT https://francis-press.com/uploads/papers/jfHv6ZHtppG1V424TPabJAXZz4nc4ehd7jgn3rIv.pdf

Author(s): Yongkang Duan
Organization(s): Sichuan University
Source:  Academic Journal of Humanities & Social Sciences
Year: 2022