On the Way to Smart Education and Urban Society

Introduction

Scientific journals are the place where researchers can inform the society about their research results, where research ideas are debated and new research directions are discussed. Publication in a peer-reviewed journal means that anyone interested will be able to see the results of the research; furthermore, the authors have to convey their ideas in a concise way so that the reader has a clear conception of the article, because there is no possibility of obscure questions being clarified in a dialogue, as is possible when presenting the results of research at conferences. There are myriad magazines that provide researchers with this opportunity.

The International Journal of Knowledge Society Research (IJKSR) published its first issue in 2010, stating that the journal established an efficient channel of communication between academic and research institutions, policy makers, government agencies and people involved with the analysis of various aspects of the knowledge society. The journal anchors government policies and examines the emerging knowledge-intensive economy and social environment. The IJKSR investigates the key issues of the knowledge society in terms of critical aspects of human life (e.g. health, education, culture, science, business, etc.) (Lytras & Daniela, 2010). In general, the journal undertook to publish articles in which authors discuss both challenges in education and challenges in the business environment, including information technology innovations, data analysis techniques, etc. The journal’s mission was to bring together academics, industry professionals, policy makers, politicians and government officials to look at the impact of information technology, and the knowledge-based era it is creating, on the key facets of today's world: the state, business, society and culture. The IJKSR investigates the ‘soft’ and ‘hard’ aspects of the knowledge society, providing organizational and cultural frameworks, as well as infrastructures enabled by the evolution of information technologies. This journal provides a global vision based on collaboration, knowledge and learning.

From 2018, the title of the journal was changed to the International Journal of Smart Education and Urban Society (IJSEUS) to show that the magazine is still in development and to update the journal's focus on emerging topics in today's society. These changes were logical in the focus of the journal, as evidenced by the results obtained in the literature review on the research published in the IJKSR in the period 2010–2017.

The following research questions are raised.

• 1.

  What fields of scientific research are represented in the papers published and to which of them have researchers have paid particular attention?

• 2.

  What is the range of countries represented by authors of published articles?

• 3.

  What kind of research designs are described in published articles?

To find answers to the research questions raised, the authors set out the objective of the study: to perform a literature review of articles published by IJKSR in the period 2010–2017, developing the research methodology described in the next section. This is followed by a description and analysis of the results obtained. In conclusion, the authors discuss the topical issues that have emerged during the study and draw conclusions about the research carried out, pointing to future research directions, both by analysing the data already collected and by forecasting new directions for the development of the journal.

Methodology

The literature review included 199 articles from 32 issues published in IJKSR for the period 2010–2017. This did not include articles published as an editorial preface to special issues of the journals. Several dimensions were set for the analysis of the articles: