Rankings of scholarly journals based on citation data are often met with skepticism by the scientific community. Part of the skepticism is due to disparity between the common perception of journals' prestige and their ranking based on citation counts. A more serious concern is the inappropriate use of journal rankings to evaluate the scientific influence of authors. This paper focuses on analysis of the table of cross-citations among a selection of Statistics journals. Data are collected from the Web of Science database published by Thomson Reuters. Our results suggest that modelling the exchange of citations between journals is useful to highlight the most prestigious journals, but also that journal citation data are characterized by considerable heterogeneity, which needs to be properly summarized. Inferential conclusions require care in order to avoid potential over-interpretation of insignificant differences between journal ratings. Comparison with published ratings of institutions from the UK's Research Assessment Exercise shows strong correlation at aggregate level between assessed research quality and journal citation `export scores' within the discipline of Statistics.
Using the Scopus dataset (1996-2007) a grand matrix of aggregated journal-journal citations was constructed. This matrix can be compared in terms of the network structures with the matrix contained in the Journal Citation Reports (JCR) of the Institute of Scientific Information (ISI). Since the Scopus database contains a larger number of journals and covers also the humanities, one would expect richer maps. However, the matrix is in this case sparser than in the case of the ISI data. This is due to (i) the larger number of journals covered by Scopus and (ii) the historical record of citations older than ten years contained in the ISI database. When the data is highly structured, as in the case of large journals, the maps are comparable, although one may have to vary a threshold (because of the differences in densities). In the case of interdisciplinary journals and journals in the social sciences and humanities, the new database does not add a lot to what is possible with the ISI databases.
A number of journal classification systems have been developed in bibliometrics since the launch of the Citation Indices by the Institute of Scientific Information (ISI) in the 1960s. These systems are used to normalize citation counts with respect to field-specific citation patterns. The best known system is the so-called "Web-of-Science Subject Categories" (WCs). In other systems papers are classified by algorithmic solutions. Using the Journal Citation Reports 2014 of the Science Citation Index and the Social Science Citation Index (n of journals = 11,149), we examine options for developing a new system based on journal classifications into subject categories using aggregated journal-journal citation data. Combining routines in VOSviewer and Pajek, a tree-like classification is developed. At each level one can generate a map of science for all the journals subsumed under a category. Nine major fields are distinguished at the top level. Further decomposition of the social sciences is pursued for the sake of example with a focus on journals in information science (LIS) and science studies (STS). The new classification system improves on alternative options by avoiding the problem
For a nullhomologous Legendrian knot in a closed contact 3-manifold Y we consider a contact structure obtained by positive rational contact surgery. We prove that in this situation the Heegaard Floer contact invariant of Y is mapped by a surgery cobordism to the contact invariant of the result of contact surgery. In addition we characterize the spin-c structure on the cobordism that induces the relevant map. As a consequence we determine necessary and sufficient conditions for the nonvanishing of the contact invariant after rational surgery when Y is the standard 3-sphere, generalizing previous results of Lisca-Stipsicz and Golla. In fact our methods allow direct calculation of the contact invariant in terms of the rational surgery mapping cone of Ozsváth and Szabó. The proof involves a construction called reducible open book surgery, which reduces in special cases to the capping-off construction studied by Baldwin.
Using "Analyze Results" at the Web of Science, one can directly generate overlays onto global journal maps of science. The maps are based on the 10,000+ journals contained in the Journal Citation Reports (JCR) of the Science and Social Science Citation Indices (2011). The disciplinary diversity of the retrieval is measured in terms of Rao-Stirling's "quadratic entropy." Since this indicator of interdisciplinarity is normalized between zero and one, the interdisciplinarity can be compared among document sets and across years, cited or citing. The colors used for the overlays are based on Blondel et al.'s (2008) community-finding algorithms operating on the relations journals included in JCRs. The results can be exported from VOSViewer with different options such as proportional labels, heat maps, or cluster density maps. The maps can also be web-started and/or animated (e.g., using PowerPoint). The "citing" dimension of the aggregated journal-journal citation matrix was found to provide a more comprehensive description than the matrix based on the cited archive. The relations between local and global maps and their different functions in studying the sciences in terms of journal lit
Publication patterns of 79 forest scientists awarded major international forestry prizes during 1990-2010 were compared with the journal classification and ranking promoted as part of the 'Excellence in Research for Australia' (ERA) by the Australian Research Council. The data revealed that these scientists exhibited an elite publication performance during the decade before and two decades following their first major award. An analysis of their 1703 articles in 431 journals revealed substantial differences between the journal choices of these elite scientists and the ERA classification and ranking of journals. Implications from these findings are that additional cross-classifications should be added for many journals, and there should be an adjustment to the ranking of several journals relevant to the ERA Field of Research classified as 0705 Forestry Sciences.
Dyads of journals related by citations can agglomerate into specialties through the mechanism of triadic closure. Using the Journal Citation Reports 2011, 2012, and 2013, we analyze triad formation as indicators of integration (specialty growth) and disintegration (restructuring). The strongest integration is found among the large journals that report on studies in different scientific specialties, such as PLoS ONE, Nature Communications, Nature, and Science. This tendency towards large-scale integration has not yet stabilized. Using the Islands algorithm, we also distinguish 51 local maxima of integration. We zoom into the cited articles that carry the integration for: (i) a new development within high-energy physics and (ii) an emerging interface between the journals Applied Mathematical Modeling and the International Journal of Advanced Manufacturing Technology. In the first case, integration is brought about by a specific communication reaching across specialty boundaries, whereas in the second, the dyad of journals indicates an emerging interface between specialties. These results suggest that integration picks up substantive developments at the specialty level. An advantage o
We introduce a novel methodology for mapping academic institutions based on their journal publication profiles. We believe that journals in which researchers from academic institutions publish their works can be considered as useful identifiers for representing the relationships between these institutions and establishing comparisons. However, when academic journals are used for research output representation, distinctions must be introduced between them, based on their value as institution descriptors. This leads us to the use of journal weights attached to the institution identifiers. Since a journal in which researchers from a large proportion of institutions published their papers may be a bad indicator of similarity between two academic institutions, it seems reasonable to weight it in accordance with how frequently researchers from different institutions published their papers in this journal. Cluster analysis can then be applied to group the academic institutions, and dendrograms can be provided to illustrate groups of institutions following agglomerative hierarchical clustering. In order to test this methodology, we use a sample of Spanish universities as a case study. We f
This paper presents simulations of the impact of tongue surgery on tongue movements and on speech articulation. For this, a 3D biomechanical Finite Element (FE) model of the tongue is used. Muscles are represented within the FE structure by specific subsets of elements. The tongue model is inserted in the upper airways including jaw, palate and pharyngeal walls. Two examples of tongue surgery, which are quite common in the treatment of cancers of the oral cavity are modelled: hemiglossectomy and large resection of the mouth floor. Three kinds of reconstruction are also modelled, assuming flaps with a low, medium or high stiffnesses. The impact of the surgery without any reconstruction and with the three different reconstructions is quantitatively measured and compared during simulated speech production sequences. More precisely, differences in global 3D tongue shape and in velocity patterns during tongue displacements are evaluated.
Robotic-assisted orthopaedic surgeries demand accurate, automated leg manipulation for improved spatial accuracy to reduce iatrogenic damage. In this study, we propose novel rigid body designs and an optical tracking volume setup for tracking of the femur, tibia and surgical instruments. Anatomical points inside the leg are measured using Computed Tomography with an accuracy of 0.3mm. Combined with kinematic modelling, we can express these points relative to any frame and across joints to sub-millimetre accuracy. It enables the setup of vectors on the mechanical axes of the femur and tibia for kinematic analysis. Cadaveric experiments are used to verify the tracking of internal anatomies and joint motion analysis. The proposed integrated solution is a first step in the automation of leg manipulation and can be used as a ground-truth for future robot-assisted orthopaedic research.
We present the first study of the Public Register of Licensed Persons and Registered Institutions maintained by the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) through the lens of complex network analysis. This dataset, spanning 21 years with daily granularity, provides a unique view of the evolving social network between licensed professionals and their affiliated firms in Hong Kong's financial sector. Leveraging large language models, we classify firms (e.g., asset managers, banks) and infer the likely nationality and gender of employees based on their names. This application enhances the dataset by adding rich demographic and organizational context, enabling more precise network analysis. Our preliminary findings reveal key structural features, offering new insights into the dynamics of Hong Kong's financial landscape. We release the structured dataset to enable further research, establishing a foundation for future studies that may inform recruitment strategies, policy-making, and risk management in the financial industry.
Analysis and extraction of useful information from legal judgments using computational linguistics was one of the earliest problems posed in the domain of information retrieval. Presently, several commercial vendors exist who automate such tasks. However, a crucial bottleneck arises in the form of exorbitant pricing and lack of resources available in analysis of judgements mete out by Hong Kong's Legal System. This paper attempts to bridge this gap by providing several statistical, machine learning, deep learning and zero-shot learning based methods to effectively analyze legal judgments from Hong Kong's Court System. The methods proposed consists of: (1) Citation Network Graph Generation, (2) PageRank Algorithm, (3) Keyword Analysis and Summarization, (4) Sentiment Polarity, and (5) Paragrah Classification, in order to be able to extract key insights from individual as well a group of judgments together. This would make the overall analysis of judgments in Hong Kong less tedious and more automated in order to extract insights quickly using fast inferencing. We also provide an analysis of our results by benchmarking our results using Large Language Models making robust use of the H
We utilize a fundamentally different model of trading costs to look at the effect of the opening of the Hong Kong Shanghai Connect that links the stock exchanges in the two cities, arguably the biggest event in international business and finance since Christopher Columbus set sail for India. We design a novel methodology that compensates for the lack of data on trading costs in China. We estimate trading costs across similar positions on the dual listed set of securities in Hong Kong and China, hoping to provide useful pieces of information to help scale 'The Great Wall of Chinese Securities Trading Costs'. We then compare actual and estimated trading costs on a sample of real orders across the Hong Kong securities in the dual listed pair to establish the accuracy of our measurements. The primary question we seek to address is 'Which market would be better to trade to gain exposure to the same (or similar) set of securities or sectors?' We find that trading costs on Shanghai, which might have been lower than Hong Kong, might have become higher leading up to the Connect. What remains to be seen is whether this increase in trading costs is a temporary equilibrium due to the frenzy to
Hong Kong case law translation presents significant challenges: manual methods suffer from high costs and inconsistent quality, while both traditional machine translation and approaches relying solely on Large Language Models (LLMs) often fail to ensure legal terminology accuracy, culturally embedded nuances, and strict linguistic structures. To overcome these limitations, this study proposes TransLaw, a multi-agent framework that decomposes translation into word-level expression, sentence-level translation, and multidimensional review, integrating a specialized Hong Kong legal glossary database, Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), and iterative feedback. Experiments on our newly constructed HKCFA Judgment 97-22 dataset, benchmarking 13 open-source and commercial LLMs, demonstrate that TransLaw significantly outperforms single-agent baselines across all evaluated models. Human evaluation confirms the framework's effectiveness in terms of legal semantic accuracy, structural coherence, and stylistic fidelity, while noting that it still trails human experts in contextualizing complex terminology and stylistic naturalness.
This study delves into the media analysis of China's ambitious Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), which, in a polarized world, and furthermore, owing to the very polarizing nature of the initiative itself, has received both strong criticisms and conversely positive coverage in media from across the world. In that context, Hong Kong's dynamic media environment, with a particular focus on its drastically changing press freedom before and after the implementation of the National Security Law is of further interest. Leveraging data science techniques, this study employs Global Database of Events, Language, and Tone (GDELT) to comprehensively collect and analyse (English) news articles on the BRI. Through sentiment analysis, we uncover patterns in media coverage over different periods from several countries across the globe, and delve further to investigate the the media situation in the Hong Kong region. This work thus provides valuable insights into how the Belt and Road Initiative has been portrayed in the media and its evolving reception on the global stage, with a specific emphasis on the unique media landscape of Hong Kong. In an era characterised by increasing globalisation and inte
People are likely to engage in collective behaviour online during extreme events, such as the COVID-19 crisis, to express their awareness, actions and concerns. Hong Kong has implemented stringent public health and social measures (PHSMs) to curb COVID-19 epidemic waves since the first COVID-19 case was confirmed on 22 January 2020. People are likely to engage in collective behaviour online during extreme events, such as the COVID-19 crisis, to express their awareness, actions and concerns. Here, we offer a framework to evaluate interactions among individuals emotions, perception, and online behaviours in Hong Kong during the first two waves (February to June 2020) and found a strong correlation between online behaviours of Google search and the real-time reproduction numbers. To validate the model output of risk perception, we conducted 10 rounds of cross-sectional telephone surveys from February 1 through June 20 in 2020 to quantify risk perception levels over time. Compared with the survey results, the estimates of the risk perception of individuals using our network-based mechanistic model capture 80% of the trend of people risk perception (individuals who worried about being i
Oxygen-plasma pre-cleans are routine before fabrication, but on BaTiO3 thin films we observed catastrophic photoresist lift-off during mild rinsing and sonication. To explain the failure, we combined optical microscopy, EDS, and XPS. EDS showed no meaningful bulk stoichiometry change, whereas XPS revealed a nanometer-scale, plasma-induced shift in surface chemistry: hydroxylation and carbonate formation consistent with a BaCO3-rich interphase at the resist/BaTiO3 boundary. This chemically weak interphase, recreated upon each plasma step and removable by simple solvent cleaning, provides the mechanism for delamination. The key takeaway for practitioners is process guidance: avoid uncritical O2-plasma use on BTO; if cleaning is required, use alternative chemistries (e.g., UV-ozone) or carefully tuned plasma windows that preserve adhesion. More broadly, the study illustrates how lightweight analytics at the surface (correlative microscopy + surface spectroscopy) can pinpoint the root cause of yield-limiting defects in oxide photonics and translate directly into higher-reliability process recipes.
This applied research article explores the application of Mixed-Integer Linear Programming (MILP) to address line-balancing challenges in the garment industry, focusing on optimizing production processes under multiple constraints. By integrating MILP with Lean Methodology principles, the study demonstrates significant improvements in operational efficiency and cost-effectiveness. The case study, conducted in collaboration with Prof Dr Ray WM Kong, highlights the successful implementation of MILP using IBM CPLEX Studio to optimize production order quantities across online and offline operations. The results reveal a remarkable reduction in labour costs, exceeding 50%, while effectively managing resource capacity and demand constraints. This study not only validates the theoretical underpinnings of MILP in resolving line-balancing issues but also underscores its practical applicability in modernizing garment production. The findings contribute valuable insights into the potential of advanced optimization techniques to enhance competitiveness and sustainability in the garment industry. This abstract succinctly captures the essence of the research, emphasizing the methodology, results
Employee turnover is a critical challenge in financial markets, yet little is known about the role of professional networks in shaping career moves. Using the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) public register (2007-2024), we construct temporal networks of 121,883 professionals and 4,979 firms to analyze and predict employee departures. We introduce a graph-based feature propagation framework that captures peer influence and organizational stability. Our analysis shows a contagion effect: professionals are 23% more likely to leave when over 30% of their peers depart within six months. Embedding these network signals into machine learning models improves turnover prediction by 30% over baselines. These results highlight the predictive power of temporal network effects in workforce dynamics, and demonstrate how network-based analytics can inform regulatory monitoring, talent management, and systemic risk assessment.
As the global economic environment becomes increasingly unstable, enhancing financial flexibility to cope with risks has become the consensus of many companies. At the same time, environmental, social, and governance (ESG) performance may be one of the effective ways. We studied the impact of a firm's ESG performance on its financial flexibility with a sample of companies listed on the Hong Kong stock market from 2018 to 2022. The empirical results show that good environmental, social and governance performance can significantly improve a firm's financial flexibility. In addition, this paper also finds that the influence of ESG performance on financial flexibility is weak for state-owned enterprises due to the influence of governance structure and market characteristics. Finally, the further analysis shows that there is a mediating role played by financing constraints in this process. This study can provide background information for state-owned enterprises' governance, information disclosure, and corporate operations. It also has guiding significance for relevant investors, management and officials.