Open Access Publishing in Developed Countries: A Comparative Study between United States of America and United Kingdom

The present study measured quantitatively the current position and growth of Open Access archives, at the first stage it gives a quantitative overview of Open Access archives established and published from different developing and developed countries. Further it focuses on a comparative study between United States of America (USA) and United Kingdom (UK) the two developed nations. Open access journals indexed in Scopus database are being surveyed for this study. As the study is based on the data collected from the Scopus database upto July 2017, which shows that the total number of journals indexed are 36377 in which 63% of journals are active and about 37% are in active. USA is leading at the top by contributing 10141 journals (28%), followed by UK by contributing 7431 journals (20%) of total number of journals indexed by Scopus. With about 5927 (26%) of total number of Active journals indexed by Scopus, USA has built significant influences headed for the progress of Open Access Scholarly publishing

A framework for SLA-centric service-based Utility Computing

Nicht angegebenService oriented Utility Computing paves the way towards realization of service markets, which promise metered services through negotiable Service Level Agreements (SLA). A market does not necessarily imply a simple buyer-seller relationship, rather it is the culmination point of a complex chain of stake-holders with a hierarchical integration of value along each link in the chain. In service value chains, services corresponding to different partners are aggregated in a producer-consumer manner resulting in hierarchical structures of added value. SLAs are contracts between service providers and service consumers, which ensure the expected Quality of Service (QoS) to different stakeholders at various levels in this hierarchy. \emph{This thesis addresses the challenge of realizing SLA-centric infrastructure to enable service markets for Utility Computing.} Service Level Agreements play a pivotal role throughout the life cycle of service aggregation. The activities of service selection and service negotiation followed by the hierarchical aggregation and validation of services in service value chain, require SLA as an enabling technology. \emph{This research aims at a SLA-centric framework where the requirement-driven selection of services, flexible SLA negotiation, hierarchical SLA aggregation and validation, and related issues such as privacy, trust and security have been formalized and the prototypes of the service selection model and the validation model have been implemented. } The formal model for User-driven service selection utilizes Branch and Bound and Heuristic algorithms for its implementation. The formal model is then extended for SLA negotiation of configurable services of varying granularity in order to tweak the interests of the service consumers and service providers. %and then formalizing the requirements of an enabling infrastructure for aggregation and validation of SLAs existing at multiple levels and spanning % along the corresponding service value chains. The possibility of service aggregation opens new business opportunities in the evolving landscape of IT-based Service Economy. A SLA as a unit of business relationships helps establish innovative topologies for business networks. One example is the composition of computational services to construct services of bigger granularity thus giving room to business models based on service aggregation, Composite Service Provision and Reselling. This research introduces and formalizes the notions of SLA Choreography and hierarchical SLA aggregation in connection with the underlying service choreography to realize SLA-centric service value chains and business networks. The SLA Choreography and aggregation poses new challenges regarding its description, management, maintenance, validation, trust, privacy and security. The aggregation and validation models for SLA Choreography introduce concepts such as: SLA Views to protect the privacy of stakeholders; a hybrid trust model to foster business among unknown partners; and a PKI security mechanism coupled with rule based validation system to enable distributed queries across heterogeneous boundaries. A distributed rule based hierarchical SLA validation system is designed to demonstrate the practical significance of these notions

Impact of Brand Label on Purchase Intention of a Customer

Main target of this research is examining the relationship between the purchase intention of cosmetics and brand label. The image of the store mediates the relationship between purchase intention and brand label in the cosmetics sector of Pakistan. To check the direct or indirect effect of brand label on purchase intention, data was collected from 200 customers of different stores. Snow ball sampling technique is used for the collection of data from respondents, and PLS-SEM 3 was used to test the hypothesis. The findings indicate that brand label positively and significantly impact customer purchase intention of cosmetics and store image is also positively linked with brand label and mediating the relationship between purchase intention and brand label. Findings will help the retail service sector to understand the importance of store image and how to enhance the consumers purchase intentions. Over long term, customer retention is better and business profitability is greater

Potential barriers amongst health care professionals of Pakistan in managing COVID-19 patients

Objectives: To evaluate basic knowledge of Health Care Professionals (HCPs) of Pakistan in managing COVID 19 patients. It includes information regarding infection control measures, administrative and professional support. This was followed by evaluation of psychological factor that can act as a barrier in effective management of these patients.Methods: The survey was conducted on line using Google Form. After approval from hospital ethical committee survey link was disseminated to HCPs using social media.Results: Four hundred fifteen HCPs were participated. Most of them were younger than 30 years and majority of them were postgraduate trainees. Results showed gaps in the knowledge about basic infection control measure like donning/doffing and understanding about high-risk procedures. On job training, professional and administrative support is compromising. Many of HCPs are anxious nowadays, having symptoms related to burn out with logical reasons behind. Even with all those hurdles they are committed and ready to volunteer themselves.Conclusion: The HCPs of Pakistan needs urgent attention for providing them Formal training regarding infection control measure. Administrative and professional support is required from institutions and scientific societies. Online teaching modules and webinar is a suitable option. The symptoms of burn out are significant and would increase with passage of time. This needs to be supported by occupational health committees

How Promotional Advertisements Can Change the Buying Behavior of Children

This study aims to highlight the impact of promotional advertising on children's buying behavior.Promotions are tools that maximize the sales of any organization. Retailers or manufacturers apply this toolto invite consumers to buy more products. The proposed study aims to focus the advertising impact on childpurchases in the Pakistani capital. It is convenient to sample 500 respondents and collect data with the helpof the questionnaire. The results show that there is a negligible correlation between the purchase behaviorand coupons. On the contrary, buying one-to-one free, the physical environment impacts significantly on thepurchase behavior. The proposed research helps marketers recognize most effective promotional ads thatcan significantly affect a child's buying behavio