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Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to consider the under-representation of women in computing, information technology (IT) and information systems in most Western countries. This under-representation can only be detrimental to society. Design/methodology/approach: The authors discuss recently published studies on the under-representation of women in this field, and the lack of career progression for women, particularly in positions of senior responsibility. The results of a survey conducted in the UK, Greece, Malaysia and China are presented, and similarities as well as differences are identified. Malaysia and China are included as the under-representation is much less in the Asian countries. Findings: The authors identify the main reasons for the under-representation and lack of career progression, and study the effect of national culture on the formation of strategy and of practice in the four countries. Research limitations/implications: The survey respondents are mainly female students studying computing/IT at degree level. In the next phase of the research, the survey will include both male and female students, lecturers and employees within the IT sector. The research will be extended into a longitudinal study, in order to monitor trends. Originality/value: The UK Government is currently undertaking a number of initiatives to improve the representation of women in information and communication technologies. For those initiatives to be successful, the cultural issues identified in the paper need to be considered. (Contains 7 tables.)

Using the InCites tool of Thomson Reuters, this study compares normalized citation impact values calculated for China, Japan, France, Germany, United States, and the UK throughout the time period from 1981 to 2010. InCites offers a unique opportunity to study the normalized citation impacts of countries using (i) a long publication window (1981 to 2010), (ii) a differentiation in (broad or more narrow) subject areas, and (iii) allowing for the use of statistical procedures in order to obtain an insightful investigation of national citation trends across the years. Using four broad categories, our results show significantly increasing trends in citation impact values for France, the UK, and especially Germany across the last thirty years in all areas. The citation impact of papers from China is still at a relatively low level (mostly below the world average), but the country follows an increasing trend line. The USA exhibits a stable pattern of high citation impact values across the years. With small impact differences between the publication years, the US trend is increasing in engineering and technology but decreasing in medical and health sciences as well as in agricultural sciences. Similar to the USA, Japan follows increasing as well as decreasing trends in different subject areas, but the variability across the years is small. In most of the years, papers from Japan perform below or approximately at the world average in each subject area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper intends to explore the impact of Information technology (IT) development on the legal concept of `signatures'. To what extent and in which way does it impact on the legal concept of `signatures'? This paper attempts to examine this issue from an international and comparative perspective. It was found that IT development has different levels of impact on the legal concept of `signatures' in different jurisdictions. In the Common Law system such as the UK and the US, it does not change the legal concept of `signatures'. However, it does put the legal concept on such an important position. On the contrary, IT development changes the legal concept of `signatures' in the Civil Law system such as Germany and China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]