Background/Objectives: Silver’s ability to kill pathogenic bacteria is being widely researched in environment, consumer, and health-related applications. One topic of voluminous research is the antimicrobial properties of silver and silver in wound dressings. This research literature has been reviewed in articles using qualitative analyses, meta-analyses, systematic reviews, bibliometric analyses, and other grounded methods. We present a new strategy for the analysis of the population of articles on the subject based on an ontology of this topic. Methods: A search of the Scopus database for all peer-reviewed articles on silver in wound dressings yielded a population of 4711 relevant ones. The ontology is a logical deconstruction of the problem: “use of silver species on nanosupports deposited on a matrix with antimicrobial effectiveness assayed by methods to promote wound healing of chronic wounds as determined by recovery”. Each bolded term denotes a dimension of the ontology, and each dimension denotes a taxonomy of constituent elements. A Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) was trained using a manually mapped subset of articles. The CNN was then used to map the population of articles. Results: Out of the 4711 articles, 3079 dealt with silver and wound dressings; the others involved silver, but were not related to wound dressings and were not considered. Overall analysis shows that three classes of silver encompass the entire field: silver nanoparticles (AgNP) (78% of papers), inorganic silver-ion-containing species (7%) and silver associated with organic molecules (15%). AgNP papers have grown exponentially beginning in the early 2000s; there is no clear trend regarding inorganic silver-containing-species papers; whereas with the silver-organics species papers, there has been growth in the past decades, but now the number of publications is stabilizing. Research on the AgNPs has primarily focused on in vitro testing (54%), with very limited animal testing (17%) and human testing (3%). On the other hand, with silver-organics, animal (30%) and human testing (38%) are prominent. Inorganic silver ion species also have been human-tested extensively (43%). Thus, in clinical applications of silver wound dressings, AgNP lags considerably as compared to the other silver species, though academic research in AgNP is robust. Conclusions: From detailed temporal visualizations of the ontological mapping, the antecedents and consequences of silver in wound dressings are presented. This first ontological analysis is a novel way of visualizing an entire research field and the temporal characteristics of the various dimensions of the ontology provide information on the current state of research as well as where the field is headed.

Over the past four decades, scholars in information systems (IS) have explored the intricacies of social inclusion/exclusion within IS (SI/E in IS). Despite 40 years of investigation, there remains a notable absence of a systematic analysis of the accumulated knowledge in SI/E within IS research. Addressing this gap, our research aims to organise the literature, identify trends and gaps and propose future research directions for SI/E within IS. Recognising SI/E as an umbrella concept, we employ ontological analysis, offering a comprehensive depiction of the domain's scope, boundaries, key constructs and relationships. We construct an ontology of SI/E within IS and employ it to compare literature from 20 established IS journals with a broader range of publications-from this analysis, we examine 4211 articles and code 897. This analysis unveils potential research avenues and highlights the distinctive focus of IS scholarship in SI/E compared with other fields. The ontology aids in conceptualising the research landscape and guiding future investigations in SI/E in IS.

Water reuse is critical to national development, sustenance, and survival in this era of climate, demographic, and social changes. There is no systemic national approach to systematically addressing this challenge. This paper presents a framework and method to develop a national research strategy for water reuse. It presents an ontology of water reuse strategies that encapsulates the combinatorial complexity of the problem clearly, concisely, and comprehensively. Subsequently, it discusses the method to use the framework to develop a national strategy, adapt it through feedback and learning, and ultimately effect a revolutionary change in the strategy for water reuse.

While companies’ privacy policies inform consumers about their privacy practices, their adherence to regulations and Fair Information Practices (FIP) may vary widely. We develop and apply an extended checklist to examine the privacy practices of companies with a higher privacy and data security risk. We find that industry sector has a significant effect on companies’ privacy practice. Specifically, companies in the non-regulated communication services sector complied to FIP better than those in the regulated financial sector, indicating that the FTC’ self-regulation approach works, at least for the examined sector. While 67% of companies fully complied to the Security principle, they were not doing enough in full specification of Enforcement in their privacy policies, indicating that regulators need to strengthen enforcement provision in regulations and develop and enlist various enforcement mechanisms. Overall, this research informs legislation and the public on the effectiveness of self-regulation and government regulation.

Air pollution problems can be large, complex, and ill-structured. They can vary from location to location and combine many complex components: urban expansion, increasing vehicles and industrial emissions, biomass burning, geographic and meteorological conditions, cultural aspects, and economic effects. However, the existing research, accumulated knowledge, and local research priorities are spread over many disciplines and lack a systematic mapping to help manage and develop new strategies for researchers and policy makers. Ontological analysis can be used as a tool to capture this complexity through simple natural-language descriptions and a structured terminology. We describe the development of an ontological framework for "Air Quality Management in Chile" and its application to evaluate the current state of the research. The process was based on focus groups and validated by a panel of multidisciplinary experts. We used the developed framework to highlight the topics that have been heavily emphasized, lightly emphasized, or overlooked in the Chilean research. The framework developed can help researchers, practitioners, and policy makers systematically navigate the domain and provide the opportunity to correct blind spots by enabling more informed hypotheses that deal with air quality issues at a national level. We believe that applying this same process to different countries will yield different results (due to differences in local knowledge and experience). The framework presented could be used to evaluate other important stakeholders (government, media, NGOs, etc.), which will provide a complete picture of how local societies deal with air quality issues at different levels. Additionally, local government institutions will benefit from this analysis by improving funding allocation and opening new research opportunities to improve the distribution of the local body of knowledge. Integr Environ Assess Manag 2021;17:273-281. © 2020 SETAC.

This paper infers the dominant, nondominant, and overlooked themes in recent research on integrating primary source collections and instruction. The authors analyzed data on 75 publications to determine relationships among the themes. The results show that the three most common themes for linking curriculum to primary sources are (1) to create, access, and describe data about cultural heritage artifacts and courses, (2) to match literary collections to classroom activities and research areas, and (3) to help students to investigate, and faculty to educate about, cultural heritage.

Background Chile, like many other countries, has seen major health reforms. It is now moving towards universal access using social protection strategies. It is essential at this point to have a clear view of the barriers to and facilitators of healthcare that Chile's population faces. Methods We used ontological meta-analysis to formalize, standardize, and assess healthcare access in Chile by mapping the 200 research papers written about it. This methodology can be adapted to any other country to analyze its current situation. Results The results highlight the frequent, infrequent, and absent research themes. Among some of the findings are the importance of improving access to healthcare using physical, virtual, and combined access, based on the resource conditions, type of care, and the adequacy of personnel providing care. Conclusions This ontology and the analysis set the foundation for future research and establishment of policies in relevant areas where we are currently not paying enough attention.

This paper presents an ontological framework that concisely captures the combinatorial complexity of river water sharing and visualizes the problem in its entirety. The framework's dimensions, the dimensions' taxonomies, and the resultant pathways are a complete, closed representation of the river water sharing problem. The framework is transdisciplinary; it is grounded in the research, the legal, and the practice literature on river water sharing. The authors illustrate the method and the application of the framework with the case study of Cauvery River water dispute between the Indian states of Karnataka and Tamil Nadu. The approach can help develop innovative pathways to resolve such problems.

The Information Systems Journal (ISJ) published its first issue in 1991, and in 2015, the journal celebrated its 25th anniversary. This study presents an overview of the leading research trends in the papers that the journal has published during its first quarter of a century via a bibliometric and ontological analysis. From a bibliometric perspective, the analysis considers the publication and citation structure of the journal. The study then develops a graphical analysis of the bibliographic material by using visualization of similarities software that employs bibliographic coupling and cocitation analysis. The work produces an ontological framework of impact and analyses the journal papers to assess qualitatively ISJ's impact. The results indicate that the journal has grown significantly over time and is now recognized as one of the leading journals in information systems. Yet challenges remain if the journal is to meet its aims in impacting and setting the agenda for the development of the Information Systems field.

Persuasion Support Systems (PSS) for health behavior change can play an important role in promoting health and well-being through physical activity. It is an emerging application at the crossroad between information systems, persuasion, and healthcare. We propose an ontology to systematically and systemically describe the construct of PSS for health behavior change. The ontology deconstructs the construct into its constituent dimensions and elements, and assembles them into a complete, parsimonious description of the same. We then map the corpus of literature on PSS for health behavior change through physical activity onto the ontology. The resulting ontological map highlights the research topics that are highly- and lightly-emphasized, as well as those with little or no emphasis. It illuminates the landscape of research in the corpus; it highlights biases in emphases that can help and hinder the advancement of the corpus. It can be used to develop a roadmap for future research.

Purpose Megaprojects are symbolic milestones of human history. Most megaprojects are one-of-a-kind endeavors to which traditional project management principles are neither applicable nor suitable, rendering the holistic study of megaprojects especially difficult. There is no systemic framework that can help systematically assess and guide megaprojects and megaproject research. In the absence of such a framework there is a significant risk of bias in planning the projects and the topics researched. The purpose of this paper is to present an ontological framework of megaprojects and discuss how it can help analyze individual megaprojects and synthesize the corpus of megaproject research. Design/methodology/approach An ontology framework of megaproject is developed by deconstructing the symbolism and purpose of megaprojects into respective dimensions and their categories. The ontological framework is then used to map the extent literature on megaproject to identify the dominant themes and gaps in the state-of-the-research. Findings The megaproject research has predominantly focused on select stakeholders (builders, governments, and communities), translation stages (implementation and conceptualization), and sublime (mostly economic). Other aspects of megaprojects have received little or no attention. Originality/value The paper presents an ontological framework to holistically capture the symbolism and sublime of megaprojects. The framework is complete, expansive, and grounded, yet simple, parsimonious, and innovative. It is a tool for decision makers more than a formal ontology readable by machines.

Persuasion Support Systems (PSS) for health behavior change can play an important role in promoting health and well-being through physical activity. It is an emerging application at the crossroad between information systems, persuasion, and healthcare. We propose an ontology to systematically and systemically describe the construct of PSS for health behavior change. The ontology deconstructs the construct into its constituent dimensions and elements, and assembles them into a complete, parsimonious description of the same. We then map the corpus of literature on PSS for health behavior change through physical activity onto the ontology. The resulting ontological map highlights the research topics that are highly- and lightly-emphasized, as well as those with little or no emphasis. It illuminates the landscape of research in the corpus; it highlights biases in emphases that can help and hinder the advancement of the corpus. It can be used to develop a roadmap for future research.

Technological innovations are seen as means to optimize the efficient and clean use of vital resources in social-biological-economic systems. However, partial theoretical perspectives and experiences of their effects can lead to significant oversight of their potential and limitations. There is a need to manage technological innovations for sustainable growth from a holistic perspective, systemically and systematically. To do so, we present and validate an ontological framework, map the current body of knowledge, and identify the emphases and gaps in the domain. The ontological framework is constructed from the common terminology of the domain. The analysis is based on a map of 375 research papers published in the most prestigious journals relevant to the domain. The results show significant gaps in the research to fulfil the potential. Future research can be directed to fill these gaps.

There is a widespread perception that older adults are underperformers when compared with younger adults in tasks that involve intense use of technology, such as computer programming. Building on schema theory, we developed a research model that contradicts this perception. To provide an initial test of the model, we conducted a computer programming experiment involving 140 student participants majoring in technology-related areas with ages ranging from 19 to 54 years. The participants were asked to develop, under some time pressure, a simple software application. The results of our analyses suggest that age was positively associated with programming experience and perceived stress, that programming experience was positively associated with programming performance, and that perceived stress was negatively associated with programming performance. A moderating effect analysis suggests that as programming experience increased, the association between perceived stress and programming performance weakened; going from strongly negative toward neutral. This happened even as age was controlled for. When taken together, these results suggest that the widespread perception that older adults are underperformers is unwarranted. With enough programming experience, older programmers generally perform no better or worse than young ones.

Alert fatigue is a well-known phenomenon in healthcare. It is one of the unintended consequences of the use of information systems (IS) in healthcare environment. Some healthcare information systems (HIS) like computerized provider order entry (CPOE) and clinical decision support (CDS) systems are especially susceptible due to their prevalence in practice (Phansalkar et al. 2013). Alert fatigue refers to the gradual desensitization of physicians, nurses, pharmacists, and other healthcare providers and professionals to alerts, warnings, and reminders generated by various HIS. It is also known as alarm fatigue, pop-up fatigue, and cry-wolf syndrome. It is a critical issue in the adoption and use of electronic health or medical records which has yet to be fully explored and understood by IS researchers. The adoption and use of IS in general can be explained by technology acceptance model (TAM) and its variance models. Some studies have incorporated people’s psychological predispositions or individuals’ personality traits into TAM or similar models. Five personality constructs—openness, neuroticism, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and extraversion—which are defined in the five-factor model (FFM) are widely accepted in the personality research. Devaraj et al. (2008) found that except for openness, personality constructs either directly or indirectly affect users’ behavioral intention to use a system which in turn affects the actual use of the system. We postulate that the phenomena related to the non-use or mis-use of IS, such as alert fatigue, can be explained by individuals’ personality. Although the adoption and use of IS have been extensively studied, the non-use and mis-use concepts are often swept aside as the by-product of the IS use. The chronic issue of drug safety alert overrides in the range of 49% to 96% (van der Sijs et al. 2006) indicates that the nonuse of selective features of IS even when required by law may be more than a minor side effect. Understanding the psychological pathways that affect individuals’ non-use or mis-use of IS can help IS designers incorporate personalized alerts that could reduce the alert fatigue. The proposed model will determine whether and which of the five personality constructs of FFM influence the desensitization to alerts which would lead to alert fatigue and the resulting behavior of overriding alerts. The desensitization sets in when users are repeated exposed to mundane routines such as mobile applications’ requests for permission to use location. It is considered the catalyst to alert fatigue. All five personality constructs are expected to influence the individual users’ susceptibility to the desensitization to alerts. The model will also integrate the task-based as well as system-based variables such as the visual cues of the importance of alerts which are shown to influence users’ perception.

We present a unified framework for envisioning precision healthcare informatics (PHI). The framework, presented as a high-level ontology, deconstructs PHI into six dimensions derived from the informatics and healthcare disciplines-the structure, function, and semiotics of informatics, and the stakeholders, care, and value of precision healthcare. Each dimension is articulated as a taxonomy of its constituent elements. Thus, the framework encapsulates the combinatorial complexity of PHI and can be used to describe its 37,800 potential components in natural English. The framework will help envision PHI systematically, systemically, an symmetrically in contrast to the often simplified, selective, and skewed approaches. The framework can be used to map the state-of-the-research, -practice, and -policy on PHI, discover the gaps within and between the states, and develop a roadmap for the future. It can be scaled and extended as PHI evolves by adding dimensions, and extending/refining the taxonomies.