Supply Chain Management & RFID: An Analysis of Research Productivity- Article summary
Summary of the paper
The paper focuses on the degree to which research and analysis have been conducted on Supply Chain Management and Radio frequency identification (RFID) (Shrivastava & Kumar, 2019). It explores the productivity levels of past and current authors regarding the two areas. The study suggested that past research lacks a comprehensive overview of research productivity patterns on SCM and RFID. Previous studies did not focus on a huge number of journals or extended period. The total number of publications and the effect of the number of publications in the academic or business field have not been explored. Consequently, the number of leading contributors to SCM and RFID research is missing. In this paper, the researchers focussed on 631 publications related to RFID and SCM. The publications have been downloaded between 1990-2015 and the researchers have used the Scopus database. The contributions of the authors in the publications have been calculated in the paper. The authors have been ranked based on their contribution to the field of SCM and RFID. In the introductory part of the paper, the researchers highlight that competition exists between researchers and academicians across colleges and universities. Hence, in this paper, the researchers attempted to measure the individual productivity levels of academicians.
The researchers in this paper have considered various types of contributions of academic researchers. The work published in the form of books, patents, inventions or other published articles has been considered. These documents indicate the quality of the research. Trends of study in the RFID and SCM field have been explored as well. The researchers in this paper suggested that in previous studies, only three types of criteria have been considered for evaluating the productivity of academicians and scholars. The criteria used are quantitative measure, qualitative measure and a combination of both the methods. Nevertheless, in this paper, an attempt has been made to use empirical research benchmarks so that the cut-off for measuring the productivity levels of the selected publications can be identified. In this study, the researchers have also used certain research standard values so that individual authors can be ranked based on their performance in the publications. The research objectives of this paper are to identify the number of research papers necessary for ranking authors as leaders of SCM and RFID research. Quantitative measures have been considered to rank the authors. Moreover, the required number of citations necessary for listing the authors as leaders of SCM and RFID publications is the second research objective. This objective will be fulfilled by using the qualitative measure. A combination of qualitative and quantitative measures has been considered so that the third research objective can be fulfilled. The third objective is to find the h-index value that sustains the leadership position of an author of SCM and RFID publications.
The findings show that the number of research papers required in order to give a ranking to the authors as leaders are at least 10 adjusted articles. Similarly, the second research objective was to find the number of citations to keep the rank and the findings show that the benchmark is 352. It is the minimum number of citations required for keeping the rank as a potential contributor or author. Lastly, the h-index value should be 8 so that an author can sustain his or her leadership position. Therefore, this paper has successfully evaluated the contribution of authors in the SCM and RFID fields. The usage of both qualitative and quantitative methods to measure the contribution is also a feasible decision. Previous literature related to the topic has been explored in this paper as well. Therefore, the literature base of this paper is strong. However, similar to all types of studies, this paper has limitations too. The citation and article count analysis could have been better. Firstly, researchers were not capable of capturing the total number of publications in the SCM and RFID fields. Moreover, the productivity metrics of the publications do not directly highlight the influence of authors to the disciplines. Similarly, the metric used for measuring the citation cannot be considered as the only measure of determining the contribution of authors. The time scale set for conducting this research is lengthy as well. Further studies and research in this area is a necessity. It would be feasible to consider other variants of h-index. Past studies should be explored further.
Summary of additional conference papers
Research has been conducted on a similar topic and the existing data and trends regarding the contribution and influence of authors have been explored. The world publication output related to RFID technology research has been examined in a study and published papers from 2002-2014 have been considered (Singh et al., 2016). The researchers in this study have considered bibliometric indicators. It has been found that annually 5.04% growth has been witnessed. In 13 years, the citation impact per paper was found to be 3.91. Countries such as South Korea, India, USA, China, Japan, UK, Malaysia and Taiwan accounted for 42% share of world citations. The contribution of authors regarding RFID in computer applications is the largest. Engineering, social sciences, genetics, biochemistry, management and accounting follows the chain. Authors from the USA contribute greatly to the cited papers and authors from other nations like Taiwan, India, Hong Kong and Switzerland follows the trend. Hence, the purpose of the study was to find the growth and contribution of academicians to the RFID field around the world. Identification of publication productivity was another objective. Moreover, the characteristic features of the cited papers have been studied. The findings indicate that authors from eight major nations have contributed to excellence in this field.
The second paper focuses on the contribution of academicians in the SCM field. Here, measurement of publication productivity and citation analysis was the major goals. In this study, the publication productivity of six SCM journals has been considered (Maloni and Carter, 2018). It has been found that SCM research is prevalent across universities. Since 50 years, research in SCM discipline is going strong. Interestingly, the slow growth rate has been found between SCM authorship and SCM scholars.
Personal views
A huge number of studies and research has been conducted on SCM and RFID. The topic has gained global importance. Academicians across colleges and universities have focussed on the trends and latest findings related to RFID and SCM. A range of publications, papers and journals have been considered. It has been understood that the importance of the fields has been understood in the academic community. Scholars across the world have attempted to explore and examine the subject. However, an analysis of the articles in the chosen area also reveals that previous research on the area was limited. Competition existed between the academicians and there was a lack of a good number of researchers and scholars in this field. The degree of their influence on SCM and RFID literature has not been understood previously despite using qualitative and quantitative measures. It has been understood that previously researchers might have faced common research issues and it impacted their performance levels. They might have faced financial issues and they might have failed to create a proper study design. Moreover, research accessibility could have been an issue as well. Hence, the poor research base on the chosen area is due to the researcher’s inabilities.
References
Shrivastava, D. P., & Kumar, A. (2019). Supply Chain Management & RFID: An Analysis of Research Productivity. International Journal of Supply Chain Management, 8(2), 404-413.
Singh, N.K., Dhawan, S.M. and Gupta, R., 2016. RFID Technology and Libraries: A Bibliometric Assessment of Global Literature during 2002-14. SRELS Journal of Information Management, 53(2), pp.89-98.
Maloni, M.J. and Carter, C.R., 2018. Publication Productivity in the SCM Discipline: 2014–2016. Transportation Journal, 57(1), pp.1-23.