Information Systems Research on Digital Platforms for Knowledge Work: A Scoping Review

Digital platforms for knowledge work, such as Upwork, Freelancer.com and Amazon Mechanical Turk connect clients with millions of workers for a range of tasks, including software development, virtual assistance, and micro-tasks. Information systems research on this emergent phenomenon has gained traction in recent years regarding publication volume and research diversity. To identify relevant papers, to distinguish them from related types of digital platforms, and to guide future research, we conducted a scoping review, focusing on the information systems literature. Results are structured according to a theoretical framework of the knowledge work process, covering three phases: Worker-client matching, committing for future action, and executing commitments. While the first phase has been analyzed extensively, we contend that the main phases of the knowledge work process have received scant attention. In this emergent stage of extant research, our review identifies promising research directions to guide prospective studies

The Performative and Interpretive Labour of Videoconferencing: Findings from a Literature Review on \u27Zoom\u27 Fatigue

Videoconferencing fatigue or ‘Zoom’ fatigue has emerged as a distinct and pressing phenomenon in light of rapid videoconferencing adoption during and after the COVID- 19 pandemic. As part of an ongoing broader literature review project, we find that extant literature primarily conceptualises videoconferencing fatigue as an error that needs to be detected and corrected based on techniques derived from medical, psychological, technological and media theories. However, we observe that videoconferencing is also a work activity, and thus consider what additional insights on videoconferencing fatigue could be obtained by deconstructing videoconferencing according to the labour that is involved in videoconferencing. Based on thematic analysis of the extant literature, we thus develop a perspective on videoconferencing in relation to the performative and interpretive labour that videoconferencing entails. This new way of thinking about videoconferencing fatigue, as labour cost, enables us to offer implications for theory and practice, and comment on directions for future research

Exploring FemTech Affordances: A Computational Analysis of Fertility and Pregnancy Apps

FemTech applications are mobile applications designed to promote women\u27s health and wellness. They have gained increasing attention with a growing market share in the digital health industry. However, most of the existing products seem to be digital health apps with pink-themed design, but not oriented to female users or female-specific illnesses. To improve the understanding of FemTech apps, this study aims to explore the different types of affordances appearing in FemTech apps, through an analysis of user reviews of fertility and pregnancy apps. We applied topic modelling analysis on the data collected and extracted three types of affordances: instrumental, experiential, and empowerment. Our findings suggest that FemTech designers can consider these affordances to meet female users\u27 expectations better and improve their experience. Furthermore, our study sheds light on the potential of FemTech in promoting female empowerment, which could inspire future research in this field

Factors Affecting the Scientific Impact of Literature Reviews: A Scientometric Study

Standalone literature reviews are fundamental in every scientific discipline. Their value is reflected by a profound scientific impact in terms of citations. Although previous empirical research has shown that this impact has a large variance, it is largely unknown which specific factors influence the impact of literature reviews. Against this background, the purpose of our study is to shed light on the driving factors that make a difference in the scientific impact of literature reviews. Our analysis of an exhaustive set of 214 IS literature reviews reveals that factors on the author level (e.g., expertise, collaboration, and conceptual feedback) and on the article level (e.g., methodological rigor) are significant and robust predictors of scientific impact over and above journal level factors. These insights enhance our understanding of what distinguishes highly cited literature reviews. In so doing, our study informs future guidelines on literature reviews and provides insights for prospective authors

Performance and systematic uncertainties of CTA-North in conditions of reduced atmospheric transmission

The Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) is the next-generation stereoscopic system of Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescopes (IACTs). In IACTs, the atmosphere is used as a calorimeter to measure the energy of extensive air showers induced by cosmic gamma rays, which brings along a series of constraints on the precision to which energy can be reconstructed. The presence of clouds during observations can severely affect Cherenkov light yield, contributing to the systematic uncertainty in energy scale calibration. To minimize these systematic uncertainties, a calibration of telescopes is of great importance. For this purpose, the influence of cloud transmission and altitude on CTA-N performance degradation was investigated using detailed Monte Carlo simulations for the case where no action is taken to correct for the effects of clouds. Variations of instrument response functions in the presence of clouds are presented. In the presence of clouds with low transmission ($\leq$ 80%) the energy resolution is aggravated by 30% at energies below 1 TeV, and by 10% at higher energies. For higher transmissions, the energy resolution is worse by less than 10% in the whole energy range. The angular resolution varies up to 10% depending both on the transmission and altitude of the cloud. The sensitivity of the array is most severely reduced at lower energies, even by 60% at 40 GeV, depending on the clouds' properties. A simple semi-analytical model of sensitivity degradation has been introduced to summarize the influence of clouds on sensitivity and provide useful scaling relations

Forecasting IT Security Vulnerabilities - An Empirical Analysis

Today, organizations must deal with a plethora of IT security threats and to ensure smooth and uninterrupted business operations, firms are challenged to predict the volume of IT security vulnerabilities and allocate resources for fixing them. This challenge requires decision makers to assess which system or software packages are prone to vulnerabilities, how many post-release vulnerabilities can be expected to occur during a certain period of time, and what impact exploits might have. Substantial research has been dedicated to techniques that analyze source code and detect security vulnerabilities. However, only limited research has focused on forecasting security vulnerabilities that are detected and reported after the release of software. To address this shortcoming, we apply established methodologies which are capable of forecasting events exhibiting specific time series characteristics of security vulnerabilities, i.e., rareness of occurrence, volatility, non-stationarity, and seasonality. Based on a dataset taken from the National Vulnerability Database (NVD), we use the Mean Absolute Error (MAE) and Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) to measure the forecasting accuracy of single, double, and triple exponential smoothing methodologies, Croston's methodology, ARIMA, and a neural network-based approach. We analyze the impact of the applied forecasting methodology on the prediction accuracy with regard to its robustness along the dimensions of the examined system and software package "operating systems", "browsers" and "office solutions" and the applied metrics. To the best of our knowledge, this study is the first to analyze the effect of forecasting methodologies and to apply metrics that are suitable in this context. Our results show that the optimal forecasting methodology depends on the software or system package, as some methodologies perform poorly in the context of IT security vulnerabilities, that absolute metrics can cover the actual prediction error precisely, and that the prediction accuracy is robust within the two applied forecasting-error metrics. (C) 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved

Towards an Economic Approach to Identity and Access Management Systems Using Decision Theory

Nowadays, providing employees with failure-free access to various systems, applications and services is a crucial factor for organizations’ success as disturbances potentially inhibit smooth workflows and thereby harm productivity. However, it is a challenging task to assign access rights to employees’ accounts within a satisfying time frame. In addition, the management of multiple accounts and identities can be very onerous and time consuming for the responsible administrator and therefore expensive for the organization. In order to meet these challenges, firms decide to invest in introducing an Identity and Access Management System (IAMS) that supports the organization by using policies to assign permissions to accounts, groups, and roles. In practice, since various versions of IAMSs exist, it is a challenging task to decide upon introduction of an IAMS. The following study proposes a first attempt of a decision support model for practitioners which considers four alternatives: Introduction of an IAMS with Role-based Access Control RBAC) or without and no introduction of IAMS again with or without RBAC. To underpin the practical applicability of the proposed model, we parametrize and operationalize it based on a real world use case using input from an expert interview

Which Factors Affect the Scientific Impact of Review Papers in IS Research? A Scientometric Study

Review papers provide a foundation for knowledge development in information systems (IS) as well as in any other scientific discipline. While some of the prominent reviews in information systems are cited more than twice a day on average, others take years to accumulate single digit citations. The magnitude of these differences and the proliferation of review papers in recent years prompt us to empirically analyze what distinguishes those reviews that have proven to be integral to scientific progress from those that might not be considered impactful. Our results demonstrate that the attributes explaining scientific impact are unique for the different types of reviews: reviews for describing, understanding, explaining, and theory testing. Transparency of the applied methodology is important for reviews that target theory testing, understanding, or explaining; similarly, reviews for describing, understanding or explaining achieve a higher impact when they develop a research agenda. By providing nuanced insights into the attributes of review papers that are valued by subsequent research, our study contributes to the vibrant discourse on literature reviews in IS. We thereby inform the different stakeholders involved in the development and publication of review papers in the IS field

35th International Cosmic Ray Conference, ICRC 2017

PKS 1510-089 (z=0.361) is one of only a handful of flat spectrum radio quasars that have been detected at very high energy (VHE, E > 100GeV) gamma rays. It is a very active source across the entire electromagnetic spectrum. VHE observations in May 2016 with H.E.S.S. and MAGIC revealed an exceptionally strong flare, which lasted for less than two nights, and exhibited a peak flux of about 0.8 times the flux of the Crab Nebula above 200GeV. The flare provides the first evidence of intranight variability at VHE in this source. While optical observations with ATOM reveal a counterpart at optical frequencies, Fermi-LAT observations reveal only low flux variability at high energy (HE, E > 100 MeV) gamma rays. Interestingly, the HE spectral index significantly hardens during the peak of the VHE flare, indicating a strong shift of the peak frequency of the high energy component. Given the expected strong absorption due to the broad-line region, the VHE emission region cannot be located deep within that region.</p