Logistics has been extensively studied since logistics recently began to be acknowledged as an important factor in enhancing competitiveness of countries as well as firms. Not a few international academic journals have been newly published across Euro...
Logistics has been extensively studied since logistics recently began to be acknowledged as an important factor in enhancing competitiveness of countries as well as firms. Not a few international academic journals have been newly published across European and North American countries and even established journals reshaped their scope to focus on logistics. Entering the 2000s literature studies on logistics research about identifying disciplinary characteristics, philosophical base and evolution of research topics or methodologies were prevalent.
It is recently observed that logistics research in Asian countries is rapidly increasing as the global economy revolves around Asian countries. Universities and academic communities in Asian countries began to publish academic journals specialized for logistics in their local languages. Despite their academic contribution, it is perceived that there are a substantial gap in research topics, methodologies, and qualities between international journals and domestic ones.
However it has not been examined for comparing logistics researches of international journals with of domestic journals in a scientific and rigorous way. Even though comparative approaches may provide valid and meaningful implications for further development of the journals on logistics research.
Therefore this thesis aims at comparing and analyzing differences and similarities between international and domestic journals in research topics, research methodologies and analytical techniques. To achieve this goal this research reviewed 990 academic journal articles published for the recent five years(2007-2011) in the three international journals written in English and in the three Korean journals written in combination with Korean and English in logistics field. All the 990 articles were categorized in terms of research topics, research methods and analytical techniques, then comparison was made between international journals and domestic journals. In addition, research trends were compared and analyzed by typology analysis using principle component analysis and cluster analysis.
The results of the research are as follows:
First, the result of the analysis for institutional productivity shows that for international journals the ratio of joint research is higher than one author research, but for domestic journals the ratio of one author is 2.5 times higher than the one of international journals. For institutional productivity both international journals and domestic journals are carried out most in university institutions, and the participation of non-institutional repository is very low. And the country of institution ranges variously around the United States and Europe for international journals, but for domestic journals the range is concentrated in Korea as 98.07% and a few Asian countries of institutions participated.
Second, the result of analyzing research topics, research methods, and data analysis is as follows. In the research topics, for both international and domestic journals 'general logistics' and 'performance' account for a great part(20.24%), but in the case of 'supply chain management' in international journals the ratio is relatively high(20.24%) whereas in domestic journals the ratio is relatively low(3.67%). However in the case of 'transportation' in domestic journals the ratio is relatively high(23.01%) whereas the ratio in international journals is relatively low(5.21%). As it is shown above the research trends of international and domestic journals are somewhat different.
For research methods, both in international and domestic articles 'survey' method is used with the highest rate, and in 'case study' method there is a big difference between international journals (20.84%) and domestic journals(4.07%). Also for 'literature review' the ratio of domestic journals is 2.5 times higher than the ratio of international journals.
For data analysis in both international and domestic journals the ratio of usage of 'SEM' is the highest, and in international journals the usage of 'SNA' is a growing trend but in domestic journals 'DEA' shows an increase. For data analysis both domestic and international journals show similar distribution and there is no big difference.
Third, in typology analysis based on literature classification this study analyzes and verifies the relations to the topics through the relations of the two by setting up the relations between research method and data analysis of preceding researches as R-D(Research Method-Date Analysis). In both international and domestic journals 4 clusters are shown valid so research hypothesis 1 and 2 are chosen. Also the distribution of cluster by the R-D shows valid difference and research hypothesis 3 is verified.
In conclusion, the academic contribution and the implications of this study are as follows:
First, this study is the first attempt for comparison analysis between international and domestic journals in the mainstream of researches on international journals. This study provides the latest internal and external research trends by collecting and analyzing last 5 years' articles in 6 international journals and in 6 domestic journals.
Second, existing researches deal only with research topics or research methods. However, this study integrates research topics, methods, and data analysis to analyze each characteristic and the relations so that this study motivates researchers to consider practically about setting up research projects and methods.
Third, in the researches in other study areas it is active to analyze the products of researches through typology analysis, but in logistics research it is insufficient. This study complements the contents of traditional research reviews, draws fundamental research topics, and verifies the association between research topics, research methods, and data analysis statistically. At the same time this study visualizes overall current situations through matrix analysis, and figures out the relations of research topics, research methods, and data analysis to study the difference more systematically.
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