Libuše Svobodová
email: libuse.svobodova@uhk.cz

Dorota Bednarska-Olejniczak
email: dorota.olejniczak@ue.wroc.pl

SMART city and economy: bibliographic coupling and co-occurrence

Keywords: bibliographic coupling, co-occurrence, Economy, SMART city

Rapid development of advanced technologies and their use bear crucial influence on Smart City development. Smart economy ranks among key Smart City components. The rising awareness of the importance of Economy in Smart cities becomes a widely discussed issue and gets reflected in professional literature. The aim of the paper is to map and analyse the state of usage of current topics and terms "SMART city" and "economy" and their bibliographic coupling and co-occurrence on Web of Science. The analysis focuses on published documents and their citation, use of journals for publishing of articles, authors that have the most articles, number of published documents in countries. The reoccurrence of the most often used key words in the articles will be analysed. Analysis was done in March 2019 via VOSviewer software. The highest number of articles is presented in Smart economy in smart cities, Journal of cleaner production and Cities. USA and India are the countries with highest number of articles. Smart city, Cities, Smart cities, Governance, Innovation, Big data, Economy and Urbanization are the most often used keywords.

Introduction

The introduction and literature review briefly describes the potential of the study in a broad context and highlights the importance of the discussed topic. The purpose of the work and its significance are defined in this chapter. The current state of the research is reviewed carefully and key publications are cited. Then principal conclusions are formulated reflecting the main goal of the paper.

In the globalized world, there is growing concern about economic growth and economy. Development of technologies and use of ICT brings a lot of benefits to society, economy, citizens, companies, cities and next stakeholders. A lot of people use advanced technologies in their daily lives. Technologies are not used only by citizens, companies, but also by governance and cities. The phenomenon of Smart Cities has been experiencing a rising interest in the academic sphere in recent years. The first article on Smart Cities that appeared in the Web of Science database was 'Smart cities -The Singapore case' by Mahizhnan [START_REF] Mahizhnan | Smart cities -The Singapore case[END_REF]. With 81 citations it is nowadays one of the most cited article on selected topic.

Graham and Aurigi [START_REF] Graham | Urbanising cyberspace? City[END_REF][START_REF] Graham | Virtual cities, social polarization, and the crisis in urban public space[END_REF] appeared in 1997 the concept of a smart city. The possibility of using ICT tools for communicating with residents was one of the impulse. Next one was collecting data or using this data to manage the city. To state one universal definition of the concept of a smart city is difficult. The report entitled Smart Cities-Ranking of European Medium-Sized Cities [START_REF] Giffinger | City-Ranking of European Medium-Sized Cities[END_REF] defined the idea of 'smart city' quite broadly. According to report "smart city is a city well performing in a forward-looking way in six characteristics [economy, people, governance, mobility, environment, and living], built on the smart combination of endowments and activities of self-decisive, independent and aware citizen". Caragliu et al. [START_REF] Caragliu | Smart Cities in Europe[END_REF] defines smart city with the conditions "when investments in human and social capital and traditional (transport) and modern (ICT) communication infrastructure fuel sustainable economic growth and a high quality of life, with a wise management of natural resources, through participatory governance."

Hall et al. [START_REF] Hall | The vision of a smart city[END_REF] in 2000 indicated that "a city that monitors and integrates conditions of all of its critical infrastructures, including roads, bridges, tunnels, rails, subways, airports, seaports, communications, water, power, even major buildings, can better optimize its resources, plan its preventive maintenance activities, and monitor security aspects while maximizing services to its citizen". Therefore, 'smart city' in this definition was associated with the use of ICT to support the delivery of public services.

"Unquestionably, cities are complex systems and the rapid urban growth that brings traffic congestion, pollution, and increasing social inequality may turn the city into a point of convergence of many risks (economic, demographic, social, and environmental)." [START_REF] Albino | Smart Cities: Definitions, Dimensions, Performance, and Initiatives[END_REF] "Smart cities provide major economic, social, and productivity benefits to all stakeholders. But without the right vision, plans, talent, and funding in place, smart city programmes will not reach their full potential." [START_REF]How smart city investment can unlock economic growth[END_REF] The issue of Smart Cities has been solved for several years. Many of the cities that have been considered successful in terms of Smart Cities will continue to have considerable place for improvement. In this topic are mostly solved technological issues, but economic view of point is not solved so often.

SMART city x economy

"Historically, cities are considered as the highest forms of economic and sociocultural achievements in human civilization, and the location of non-primary economic activities". [START_REF] Alawadhi | Building Understanding of Smart City Initiatives[END_REF] "When the devices start becoming smarter, it inevitably leads to a smarter ecosystem of devices. The extension of such a development forms something that is called a smart city -A whole city that uses electronics to keep the area running at high or peak efficiency. A recent whitepaper from ABI Research concludes that smart cities will see an overall economic development of 5% annually, which translates to almost $20 trillion in a decade. This again validates that smart cities are a great investment that can impact the economy in a positive way." [9] Deloitte presents three key differentiators of a smart city [10]:

 "Quality of life  Economic competitiveness  Sustainability Economic competitiveness is presented as cities have long been important centers of trade and commerce, leveraging the proximity of so many diverse citizens to help drive an innovative economy. A smart city is a business-friendly city, ensuring that jobs and tax revenue form a healthy economic platform."

Cities are as "´engines of economic growth´ and dominate local and national economies." Smart City System building blocks by Kumar [START_REF] Kumar | Smart Economy in Smart Cities[END_REF] are presented in fig. 1.

Fig. 1. Smart City System [11]

A city has many areas in which it can be managed to transform itself into a smart city. Six basic directions for action will enable it to direct its objectives along this route, according to the definition of smart cities given by Boyd Cohen [START_REF]What is a smart city?[END_REF], an urban development researcher, see fig. 2.

Fig. 2. The six action areas of smart cities [12]

The smart economy: "it is a city that wants to position itself as a capital of the new economy and innovation as well as a centre that draws people to it." [START_REF]What is a smart city?[END_REF] Smart People Smart Economy

Smart Environment

Smart Living

Smart Mobility

Smart Governance

Methodology and goal

Steps of the research are as follows. Firstly, there is the introduction to the topic. The methodological background brings the aim and goal of the study, description of the study procedure and used sources. The literature review contains basic definitions and the starting points to selected issues. The next phase deals with results from bibliographic coupling and co-occurrence of selected keywords. The final phase focuses on summarization and discussion of findings gained from the research. The aim of the paper is to map and analyse the state of usage of current topics and terms "SMART city" and "economy" and their bibliographic coupling and co-occurrence on Web of Science. Focus will be given on documents and their citation, use of journals for publishing of articles, authors that have the most articles and number of published documents in countries. In co-occurrence will be analysed the most often used keywords in the articles. The previous studies basically focus only on a certain perspective. Visual bibliometric analysis on connected topics smart cities and economy was not founded. This study employed scoping review techniques to dissect the status quo for SMART city and economy. Our search of scientific and research sources focused on scientific sources. The bibliometric mapping study method by Leung, Sun, & Bai [START_REF] Leung | Bibliometrics of social media research: A co-citation and co-word analysis[END_REF] and scoping review technique by Arksey & O'Malley [START_REF] Arksey | Scoping studies: Towards a methodological framework[END_REF] were adopted in this review-based article.

The number of co-occurrences and total strength of the co-occurrence links with other keywords for each of the selected keywords were generated in VOSviewer. Cooccurrence is the term used to describe the proximity of keywords in the title, abstract, or keyword list in publication (Van Eck & Waltman, [START_REF] Van Eck | Visualizing Bibliometric Networks[END_REF]) to find connections so that the research topic can be identified (Wang et al., [START_REF] Wang | A Bibliometric Analysis of the First Twenty-Five Years of the International Journal of Uncertainty, Fuzziness and Knowledge-Based Systems[END_REF]). The link indicates the strength of their occurrences. These methods were used also by Maskuriy et. al. [START_REF] Maskuriy | Industry 4.0 for the Construction Industry: Review of Management Perspective[END_REF].

Two terms were searched 15 th of March 2019 in the Web of Science database. "SMART city" AND "economy" were put into query. There were 275 articles found in all publications. There were 147 articles in journals and book chapters found in total. Then there were 128 findings in Proceedings papers, 3 in editorial material and 2 in reviews. Only articles in journals and book chapters were included into the next evaluation. In case of searching the term "economics" instead of the term "economy" only 22 articles were found. Due to this reason, the term "economy" was used in the query in the next evaluation. Full record and cited references were saved as Other Reference Software and uploaded to VOSviewer. The analysis that is presented in this paper was made via VOSviewer. Analysis is made between selected sources if it is not written in another way in the text.

Fig. 3. Selection of documents in bibliometric analysis

Web of Science

The article is established on secondary sources. The secondary sources provide information about smart city and economy, information gained from professional literature and databases and from professional press, from web sites, discussion at professional seminars and conferences related to smart cities and economy. Then it was necessary to select, classify and update accessible relevant information from the high number of published materials that provide the basic background about the solved issue.

Results

Graphs and tables that represent the outputs from VOSviewer are shown in this chapter. Into evaluation were taken such criteria that are interesting in publishing of the articles.

The highest number of citations on document, the most often used journal for publishing this topic, authors that published the highest number of the articles, in which country is the most often solved this issue. The last one solved issue are the most often set keywords connected with the topics.

Bibliographic coupling

Documents x number of citations

. The minimum number of citations of a document was selected 10. Out of 147 documents, 19 documents meet the threshold. For each of the 19 documents, the total strength of the bibliographic coupling links with other documents will be calculated.

Fig. 4. Bibliographic couplingdocuments

The documents with the greatest total link strength will be selected. Some of the 19 items in the network are not connected with each other. The largest set of connected items consists of 14 items. Results are presented in fig. 4. Four clusters were founded. The biggest is composed of 5 authors. Ferrara [START_REF] Ferrara | The Smart City and the Green Economy in Europe: A Critical Approach[END_REF], Martinez-Balleste [START_REF] Martinez-Balleste | The Pursuit of Citizens' Privacy: A Privacy-Aware Smart City Is Possible[END_REF], Neirotti [START_REF] Neirotti | Current trends in Smart City initiatives: Some stylised facts[END_REF], Sun [START_REF] Sun | Blockchain-based sharing services: What blockchain technology can contribute to smart cities[END_REF] and Torres-Sospedra [START_REF] Torres-Sospedra | Enhancing integrated indoor/outdoor mobility in a smart campus[END_REF]. The second cluster composed of 4 authors. Angelidou [START_REF] Angelidou | Smart cities: A conjuncture of four forces[END_REF], March [START_REF] March | Smart contradictions: The politics of making Barcelona a Self-sufficient city[END_REF], Wiig [START_REF] Wiig | The empty rhetoric of the smart city: from digital inclusion to economic promotion in Philadelphia[END_REF] and Yamagata [START_REF] Yamagata | Simulating a future smart city: An integrated land useenergy model[END_REF]. The third composed of Khan [START_REF] Zaheer | Towards cloud based big data analytics for smart future cities[END_REF], Scuotto [START_REF] Scuotto | Internet of Things Applications and challenges in smart cities: a case study of IBM smart city projects[END_REF] and Walravens [START_REF] Walravens | Mobile city applications for Brussels citizens: Smart City trends, challenges and a reality check[END_REF]. The last one consisted of Capdevila [START_REF] Capdevila | Smart city or smart citizens? The Barcelona case[END_REF] and Tukiainen [START_REF] Tukiainen | Cities as Collaborative Innovation Platforms[END_REF]. Alone are publicatons of Hens [START_REF] Hens | On the evolution of "Cleaner Production" as a concept and a practice[END_REF], Shuai [START_REF] Shuai | Charging Electric Vehicles in the Smart City: A Survey of Economy-Driven Approaches[END_REF], Das [START_REF] Das | Hyderabad: Visioning, restructuring and making of a high-tech city[END_REF], Hernandez-Munoz [START_REF] Hernandez-Munoz | Smart Cities at the Forefront of the Future Internet. Future Internet: Future internet assembly 2011: Achievements and technological promises[END_REF] and Mahizhnan [START_REF] Mahizhnan | Smart cities -The Singapore case[END_REF]. Results of number of citations are presented in tab. 1. Number of citations are taken directly from Web of Science.

Sourcesjournals x documents

. Minimum number of documents of a journal is 4. Of the 98 journals only 4 meet the thresholds. Due the small number of journals were criteria reduced on 3. Only 7 from 98 sources meet the thresholds. For each of the 7 journals (see tab. 2 and fig. 5), the total strength of the bibliographic coupling links with other sources will be calculated. The journals with the greatest total link strength will be selected. Two clusters were found in journals (sources). By red is marked one and by green the second one.

Fig. 5. Bibliographic couplingsources

Authors x documents

The minimum number of documents of an author was set at four. Only 3 authors meet the thresholds of the 403 authors. Criteria were reduced to 3 documents of an author and 7 authors meet the thresholds. In case of further reduction to 2 documents of an author, 37 meet the thresholds. The highest number of publications have Mboup, G. with 6 documents. 4 documents presented Kumar, T.M. Vinod and Mwaniki, D. 3 publications published Spruijt, W., Rodgers, T., Govada, S.S. and Alizadeh, T.

Country x documents

. Minimum number of documents of a country was set at 5. 9 countries meet the thresholds of the 53 countries. The total strength of the bibliographic coupling links with other countries will be calculated for each of the 9 countries (see tab. 3 and fig. 6).

Fig. 6. Bibliographic coupling -country

The highest number of articles were written in USA and in India followed by Italy, Spain, Peoples Republic of China and England. The highest number of citations was done in Italy, Spain, England, France, Russian Federation and in USA.

Three clusters of countries were found in the cluster analysis. The first cluster composed of Australia, India, Peoples R. China and USA. The second cluster composed of France, Italy and Spain. The third one from England and Russia.

Co-occurrence

All keywords

Minimum number of occurrences of a keyword was set at 6. 19 keywords meet the threshold of the 706 keyword (see tab. 4 and fig. 7). For each of the 19 keywords, the total strength of the co-occurrence links with other keywords will be calculated. The keywords with the greatest total link strength will be selected. Internet, challenges, management, infrastructure, network, trends, urban planning, systems and sustainable development have 5 occurrences. Due better clarity will be in graph presented keywords with 6 occurrences and more.

There were identified 4 clusters. The first one composed of 7 items: cities, growth, Internet of things, model, open innovation, smart city and sustainability. Second composed of 6 items: city, economy, smart cities, technology, urban governance and urbanization. The third cluster composed of big data, future, innovation and politics. Together are also often used terms 'governance' and 'sharing economy'. Due to the limited number of pages and depth of the research the limitations might be found in the following areas:

 Minimum number of citations of a document was set at10. In case that number of citation of the document will be smaller, more documents will meet the threshold. On the contrary, results will be not so well arranged.  Number of documents in the journal was reduced due to the small number of journals (sources) with many relevant articles. The criteria were reduced to 3 papers per journal. 7 journals out of 98 sources meet the thresholds.  Minimum number of documents of an author was set at 4. Only 3 authors out of 403 authors meet the thresholds. When the minimum number of documents by one author is reduced to 3 documents, 7 authors meet the thresholds. In case of 2 documents per author, the number of occurrences will increase.  Minimum number of documents of a country was set at 5. Only 9 countries out of the 53 countries meet the thresholds. In case of a smaller number of documents, the number of countries meeting the thresholds will increase.  Minimum number of occurrences of a keyword was set at 6. 19 keywords meet the threshold out of the 706 keywords. In case of smaller occurrence of a keyword, there will be higher amount of keywords.

Conclusion

Bibliographic coupling and co-occurrence measure a similarity that uses citation analysis to establish a similarity relationship between documents, authors, countries etc. A wide variety of fields may be applied in, since it helps researchers to find related research conducted in the past and to find the gap, nitch or necessities in the analysed field of study.

Topic Smart city and economy is getting its importance more and more. First article was into Web of Science included in 1999 where Mahizhnan wrote [START_REF] Mahizhnan | Smart cities -The Singapore case[END_REF] that "the final goal is not just economic growth but an enhancement of the quality of life for all people, making Singapore not just a smart city but a quality city-state." The next articles were published in 2011, for ex. [START_REF] Hernandez-Munoz | Smart Cities at the Forefront of the Future Internet. Future Internet: Future internet assembly 2011: Achievements and technological promises[END_REF] that was with 128 citations the most cited from the publication year. The gap was in 2012 and from 2013 till 2017 numbers of articles in journals or book chapters were still rising on 52. It fall on 43 in 2018.

Neirotti, Paolo; De Marco, Alberto; Cagliano, Anna Corinna; et al. [START_REF] Neirotti | Current trends in Smart City initiatives: Some stylised facts[END_REF] with 378 citations with publication Current trends in Smart City initiatives: Some stylised facts in journal Cities recorded the highest number of citations from all authors. Hernandez Munoz, et. al. were cited 94 times [START_REF] Hernandez-Munoz | Smart Cities at the Forefront of the Future Internet. Future Internet: Future internet assembly 2011: Achievements and technological promises[END_REF], Angelidou [START_REF] Angelidou | Smart cities: A conjuncture of four forces[END_REF] was cited 85 times and Mahizhnan [START_REF] Mahizhnan | Smart cities -The Singapore case[END_REF] 79 times in database Web of Science. Sources as Cities with 562 citations, book Future Internet: Future Internet Assembly 2011: Achievements and Technological Promises with 94 citations, IEEE communications magazine with 60 citations, Applied Energy with 53 and Business Process Management Journal with 43 citations are the most often cited. Topic is the most often solved in Italy, Spain, USA and India. Smart city, cities, city, governance, innovation, smart cities, economy, technology and big data are the most often published keywords connected with topic Smart city and economy. According to above mentioned words and done analysis is Smart city also often connected with keywords technology, urbanization, growth, sharing economy, future, model, politics, sustainability, urban governance, internet of things and open innovation. The creation of smart cities is a motivator for growth, new jobs and is a productive investment in future, leading to a sustainable and environmentally friendly economy. Well-arranged pictures presented in this paper demonstrate the research achievements in the domain of the smart city and economy, which could help researchers, practitioners and mayors and politics to identify the underlying impacts from authors, journals, countries, institutions, references, and research topics.

Future research will be focused on the most frequent occurrence of keywords used in the connection of the analysed issue and their combination with more detailed description so that a wider notion on the topic could be provided.

  TOPIC-("smart city") AND ("economy") = 275 articlesLimited

Fig. 7 .

 7 Fig. 7. Co-occurrenceall keywords

Table 1 .

 1 Documents x number of citations x clusters

	Authors	Citations	Authors	Citations
	Ferrara	16	Scuotto	45
	Martinez-Balleste	72	Walravens	23
	Neirotti	396	Capdevila	22
	Sun	20	Tukianinen	16
	Torres-Sospedra	19	Hens	15
	Angelidou	102	Shuai	22
	March	35	Das	10
	Wiig	10	Hernandez-Munoz	101
	Yamagata	54	Mahizhnan	81
	Khan	32

Table 2 .

 2 Bibliographic couplingjournals (sources)

	Source	Documents	Citations	Total link strength
	Journal of cleaner production	7	19	159
	Cities	7	562	154
	Sustainability	5	6	88
	Smart economy in smart cities	20	10	74
	Telematics and informatics	3	28	58
	Sustainable smart cities in India:	3	0	40
	challenges and future perspectives
	Sustainable smart cities: creating	3	0	31
	spaces for technological, social
	and business development

Table 3 .

 3 Bibliographic coupling -country

	Country	Documents	Citations	Total link strength
	Italy	16	452	950
	Spain	16	231	815
	USA	18	46	774
	Peoples r. China	13	22	682
	England	11	69	605
	India	18	12	469
	France	8	57	431
	Australia	8	20	337
	Russia	7	51	281

Table 4 .

 4 Co-occurrenceall keywords

	Keyword	Occurrences	Total link strength
	Smart city	77	132
	Cities	27	54
	City	19	44
	Governance	12	30
	Innovation	13	30
	Smart cities	21	30
	Economy	9	29
	Technology	8	25

Acknowledgements. This paper is supported by specific project No. 2103 "Investment evaluation within concept Industry 4.0" at FIM University of Hradec Kralove, Czech Republic. The authors thank Anna Borkovcova for her help with the project.


Arogundade Oluwasefunmi

Abayomi-Alli Adebayo

Adesemowo Kayode
email: kadesemowo@soams.co.za3

Bamigbade Taiwo
email: bamigbadetaiwo@gmail.com

Odusami Modupe
email: modupe.odusami@convenantuniversity.edu.ng

Olowe Victor

An Intelligent Marketspace Mobile Application for Marketing Organic Products

Keywords: Access, geolocation, marketspace, model view, orgafamob, organic farming, pragmatism, sustainable food

Sustainable food security (Sfs) desires not only that people always have passage to ample and nutritious food, but also that this food be formed with minimum environmental impact. This research is aimed at developing a mobile application for marketing organic farm products with the functionality of automated geo-location services, preferred goods delivery services, easy access to different organic farm produce. The mobile user platform consists of the Presentation, Business, Data and Data storage which is a slight variation of the Model-View-Controller architecture. It also takes into deep awareness the configuration, security and communications aspect as these are the underlying factors for the robustness of mobile application. The Presentation Tier consists of the user interface and the logic used to navigate around the user interface meaningfully. It modifies and shows information into a human distinct pattern. The Business Logic tier is essentially efficient for information transfer between the user interface and the database of the project. The last layer of the three-tiered architecture is the Data Access tier, which is made up of the Database servers. The application was implemented in Java, SQLite (local) and PHP for the backend server and Amazon Web Services for cloud infrastructure. Farmers were engaged in cursory testing. Users find the application concept very interesting.

Introduction

Agriculture is the main factor for the survival of humans and it also provides food, fuel and other services in line with ecosystems. It plays an important function in eco-nomic development and it is an essential source of livelihood. Agriculture is also a crucial origin of environmental downgrading, adding to climate variation, decreasing freshwater resources, detracting soil fertility and contaminating the environment over fertilizer and pesticide [START_REF] Zhang | The impact of agricultural chemical inputs on environment: Global evidence from informetrics analysis and visualization[END_REF][START_REF] Binta | Economic and Environmental Performances of Organic Farming System Compared to Conventional Farming System: A Case Farm Model to Simulate the Horticultural Sector of the Niayes Region in Senegal[END_REF]. Essentially, food production relies on the lofty natural resources it is derogating. Sfs therefore not only requires that all people always have access to sufficient and nutritious food, but food be formed with minimal environmental brunt. Hence, sustainable agricultural development desires that agriculture face the demands of the present without negotiating the capability of future generations to tourney their own demands [START_REF] Cioloş | Sustainable agriculture for the future we want[END_REF]. Achieving these goals by current Agriculture practices has not been very successful. Today, Agriculture is not only a dominating factor of environmental degradation, it is a major force compelling the Earth System beyond the 'safe-operating space' for humanity [START_REF] Rockström | A safe operating space for humanity[END_REF][START_REF] Campbell | Agriculture production as a major driver of the earth system exceeding planetary boundaries[END_REF]. Knowing that we have not achieve Sf s today and given the fact that we will probably need to double food production by 2050 so that we can feed 9 billion people with rising demand for meat and dairy products [START_REF] Foley | Solutions for a cultivated planet[END_REF], there is a drastic need for changes in the food system. We need to increase the production of food in the right locations at fair prices, protecting livelihoods to farmers and reducing the environmental cost of agriculture. Recently, the market for organic food ( ORF)has increased, and call for fair sustainable farming.

It is worth mentioning that this research is aimed at developing a mobile application for marketing organic farm products with the functionality of automated geolocation services, preferred goods delivery services, easy access to different organic farm produce. Although a considerable amount of study can be found in the literature which identifies the attitude of dairy farmers towards organic farming [START_REF] Nandi | Smallholder organic farmer's attitudes, objectives and barriers towards production of organic fruits and vegetables in India: A multivariate analysis[END_REF][START_REF] Rana | Farmer attitude towards organic vegetable cultivation in Rangunia Upazila, Chittagong, Bangladesh[END_REF], economic and social implications of organic agriculture [START_REF] Torres | Economic and Social Sustainability through Organic Agriculture: Study of the Restructuring of the Citrus Sector in the "Bajo Andarax" District (Spain)[END_REF], these did not take mobile and real-time, geo-location into due consideration. The contributions of this work are:  Ensuring real time information delivery on changing trends and key discoveries in the organic farm produce.  Providing organic farmers cultivating crops with an e-commerce platform for easy facilitation of their business.  Enabling practicing organic farmers form a cluster around themselves thereby empowering them with the benefits that comes with economics of scale.

The paper is organized in the following way. Section 2 comprises of related works in the area of organic farming and mobile applications that has been developed to improve the availability of organic products. Section 3 deals with the requirement analysis and design methodology of the proposed mobile application. In section 4, we detail the implementation of the mobile application for organic market Space. Finally, section 5 includes our conclusion

Literature Review and related works

In this section, we discuss the economic and social meanings of organic Agriculture, and the usage of ICT and mobile technology in Agriculture.

2.1

Economic and Social Implications of Organic Agriculture (OA)

The advantage of OA for micro farmers is reliant on organic yields, the cost of organic production, and the size of the organic price choice [START_REF] Ton | Productivity and profitability of organic farming systems in East Africa[END_REF]. In [START_REF] Banjara | Economic Impact of Organic Farming; Cases from the Farmers of Nepal[END_REF], economic impact of organic farming in livelihoods of farmers of Nepal was explored. Binta and Barbier in [START_REF] Binta | Economic and Environmental Performances of Organic Farming System Compared to Conventional Farming System: A Case Farm Model to Simulate the Horticultural Sector of the Niayes Region in Senegal[END_REF], carried out a comparative study on the economic and environmental performances of organic and conventional horticultural farming systems in the Niayes region in Senegal.

Health has been one of the major reasons consumers purchase organic goods [START_REF] Shafie | Consumer Perceptions Towards Organic Food[END_REF][START_REF] Wang | Factors Influencing Organic Food Purchase Intention in Developing Countries and the Moderating Role of Knowledge[END_REF] so much as safety, quality and taste [14-17] are very imperative motivations for purchasing ORF. In marketing and promoting organic ORF, eating pleasure (particularly tastiness) is now the main argument, followed by health and then environmental benefits [START_REF] Lee | You taste what you see: Do organic labels bias taste perceptions?[END_REF][START_REF] Lee | Agricultural Production System Based on IoT[END_REF]. It is surprising to discover that consumers appear to be relatively incognizant of the constructive impact that OA has on the environment [START_REF] Meemken | Organic Agriculture, Food Security, and the Environment[END_REF].

Results showed that economically, farmers were found satisfied and encouraged to expand their organic business. Although, there is limited market for ORF in the region unlike the conventional farming however, investment in agro-ecological research, organic management can greatly improve it. Especially through the establishment of a local market for organic crops. Hence, [START_REF] Beach | Organic Farming in Maine[END_REF] explained that the study put out by the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association (MOFGA) indicates that these farms are contributing to Maine's economy positively.

ICT and Mobile Technology in Agriculture

A short introduction of the implications of ICTs in agricultural sector was presented in [START_REF] Salampasis | Information and Communication Technology in Agricultural Development[END_REF]. The authors demonstrated the fact that there are large number of ICT-enabled services which can improve many processes in the agricultural sector. In [2 3 ] the impact of proliferation of ICTs was investigated, due to the growth of mobile technologies, in order to know if it has actually had any significant impact on Agriculture. It was confirmed that ICTs play a significant role in enhancing agricultural production. Study [START_REF] Kiambi | The use of Information Communication and Technology in advancement of African agriculture[END_REF] presented a research that assessed the traits, diversity and impacts of ICTs used in African agriculture. The key challenges hindering more widespread use of the technologies were also highlighted by the author. The study in [START_REF] Kiambi | The use of Information Communication and Technology in advancement of African agriculture[END_REF], vividly reveals that ICTs are making impact in increasing productivity and marketing of products but there are still several constraints for adequate utilization by the farmers. Hence, there is likelihood that combination of mobile technologies with other ICT platforms such as mass media, will have exponential impact on agriculture. Study in [START_REF] Saidu | Application of ICT in Agriculture: Opportunities and Challenges in Developing Countries[END_REF] on the influence of ICT in agriculture, (in developing countries), in respect of opportunities and challenges, found that one of the major benefits of ICT in agricultural sector is the improvement of market activities. Finally, it is merit observing that the motivation of buyers to buy ORF are interest and sentimental federation of organic goods with realness and reminiscence taste of the past. However, the loss of adequate provision of ORF [START_REF] Lee | You taste what you see: Do organic labels bias taste perceptions?[END_REF] and, above all, its higher price is often a strong obstacle to the purchase of ORF. Also, the inadequacy of information on the meaning of ORF [START_REF] Hamzaoui-Essoussi | The Organic Food Market: Opportunities and Challenges[END_REF], coupled with diverse of ways to label organic products has affected the purchasing power of organic products. Despite the fact that organic farming looks quite comforting for consumers, the response of farmers to the concept is not at an alarming rate. Only a minority of farmers, especially in dairy areas, are in favour of organic farming.

Methodology

The Orgfarmob, is underpinned by pragmatism philosophy as it seeks to provide practical solutions and outcomes [START_REF] Saunders | Chapter 4: Understanding research philosophy and approaches to theory development[END_REF]. It follows the build and process methods from a design research point of view [START_REF] Amaral | About Computing Science Research Methodology[END_REF][START_REF] Holz | Research methods in computing[END_REF], rather than design science research methodology strategy. Given the emphasis on practical solutions, the logical design, presented as the design process, is the primary focus of this paper: the development of orgfarmob marketspace. It starts off tilting towards inductive approach to discern better the nature of the problem within the context (organic farmers in Nigeria) and guide towards gathering requirement [START_REF] Saunders | Chapter 4: Understanding research philosophy and approaches to theory development[END_REF].

Before proceeding with 'requirement analysis', 'architectural framework' and 'design and use-case design considerations', we quickly outline the orgfarmob marketspace build and process approach. In line with our pragmatic approach, we built on aspects of the framework for computing research methods [START_REF] Holz | Research methods in computing[END_REF]. We only utilized aspects that we required and applicable to our study. The following were considered:

Framework for computing research

 What do we want to achieve? a.

(Find out what is happening)the authors wished to achieve a better understanding of the use and application of ICT mobile development in organic farming (in Nigeria), starting with the western part of Nigeria. b.

(Develop something that works)the authors will embark on developing a mobile tool, orgfarmob' to understudy and assist organic farmers.

 Where did the data come from? c. (Read)the authors will literatures on organic farming and ICT in agriculture. d.

(Observe, Ask)the authors will engage with and get opinions from organic farming practitioners in western part of Nigeria. e.

(Model)the authors will conceptualise and utilize UML to model practical design model covering user activity, admin activity, entity-relationship and sequence. f.

(Where to collect)the authors will collect and collate relevant requirement and design data from the field and conceptual analysis.

 What did they do with the data? g.

(Identify themes, Identify trends)the authors will use the collated information to better understand organic farming and use of ICT in organic farming h.

(Create frameworks/taxonomy/prototype)the authors will in the first iteration design an architectural framework for orgfarmob. Thereafter, in iterative manner, the author will prototype the orgfarmob application.

 Had they achieved their goal?

i.

(Evaluate results, Draw conclusions)the authors, having gain understanding and developed working prototype, will now be better placed to analyse and iteratively finetune the design and build (soft-ware development). j.

(identify limitation)the authors will draw from the design and development process what are the bounds of limits and/or how prior studies can be extended or critique.

Flowing from the framework for computing research approach, this study was carried out through source of opinions from organic agriculture practitioners, some web materials, survey of organic farmers in Nigeria and the world at large through the internet and personal interview of organic farming practitioner.

The Unified Modelling Language (UML), Meta model elements are arranged diagrammatically. Several diagrams are used for distinct purpose based on the angle from which you are viewing the system. The various views are called "architectural views". These architectural views enable the organization of knowledge, and diagrams allow the communication of knowledge. Then knowledge itself is contained in the model or set of models that focuses on the problem and solution. Fig 1depicts the architectural view of the proposed study. The given implementation model is majorly categorized into two broad categories which are the mobile user platform and the remote infrastructure.

Architectural Framework

The mobile user platform consists of the Presentation, Business, Data and Data storage which is a slight variation of the Model-View-Controller architecture. It also takes into deep awareness the configuration, security and communications aspect as this are the underlying factors for the robustness of the mobile application. The Presentation Tier consists of the user interface and the logic used to navigate around the user interface meaningfully. It converts and displays information into a human legible form. The Business Logic tier is mainly responsible for information exchange between the user interface and the database of the project.

The last layer of the three-tiered architecture is the Data Access tier, which consists of the Database servers. The updates of the information and server communication exist here.

Design and Use-case design considerations

In line with the pragmatic approach of this paper, the logical design is the critical and main design process [START_REF] Alwadain | A model of enterprise architecture evolution[END_REF]. The software coding thereafter results in the developed prototype which is the first instance of validation of the design process. Sequence diagrams, also called event diagrams, with only one instance shown in figure 5, describe interactions among classes in terms of an exchange of messages over time. Due to space constraint, we couldn't show the sequence diagrams for each of the interactions and communications between the entities involved in the system.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

In this section, we only discuss some of the modules incorporated into the mobile application to achieve the objectives of this research work. The result thus far, which flows from the framework for computing research and use-case approaches is a web and mobile application management system for organic farming. Figure 6 outline the Admin-User dashboard page: part of the backend module to view every activity from the aspect of ordered products to the order management, user management, and mobile application management and so on. The listing order page, figure 7, is the module used to view new ordered products, processed products and processing products. Also, on this page, administrators can manage order status. Sam-ple cart and shopping market place are shown in figure 8. Readers should note that due to paper length constraint, several application interfaces are not included.

CONCLUSION

This study was carried out through source of opinions from professionals in organic agriculture, literature review, some web materials, survey of organic farmers (primarily in Nigeria), and personal interview of organic farming practitioners. Orgfarmob marketspace is a mobile application that helps in the process of Buying and Selling of Organic products, gives them access to e-commerce platform and gives them information about the registered cooperative bodies based on geolocation and the aspect of organic farm produce. The system was model with UML.

The main contribution to knowledge of this project is the framework for computer research approach to the conceptualisation and design of real-time, geo-location information delivery system that enables practicing organic farmers to empower themselves and leverage on economics of scale. It provides organic farmers cultivating crops with an e-commerce platform for easy facilitation of their business. It enables practicing organic farmers form a cluster around themselves thereby empowering themselves with the benefits that comes with economics of scale.

Future Direction

In future iteration, usability, acceptance and observation studies are planned. This will be followed by longitudinal studies over a three-to-five years period. Economic consideration might be considered: contingent valuation, hedonic pricing. The authors hope to develop a reference ontology, based on the architectural framework, to assist body of knowledge in the use of mobile application in organic farming.

Figure 2 Fig. 1 .Fig. 2 .Fig. 3 .Fig. 4 .

 21234 Fig. 1. Standard system architecture for Mobile Application Development.

Fig. 5 .Fig. 6 .Fig. 7 .

 567 Fig. 5. Admin Add Category Sequence Diagram

Fig. 8 .

 8 Fig. 8. Sample Cart and shopping market place pages


Patrick Mikalef
email: patrick.mikalef@ntnu.no

Mapping the intellectual progress in e-Business

Keywords: Co-word analysis, bibliometrics, conceptual mapping, e-services

This study aims to identify the conceptual structure and the thematic progress in e-Business, e-Services and e-Society and to elaborate on backbone/emerging topics in the field from 2001 to 2019. To address this objective, this paper employs hierarchical clustering, strategic diagrams and network analysis to construct the intellectual map of the I3E community and to visualize the thematic landscape in this field, using co-word analysis. Overall, a total of 835 papers from the proceedings of the e-Business, e-Services and e-Society (I3E) conference, and the respective 2574 author-assigned keywords, were included in the analyses. The results indicate that the community has significantly focused in areas like technology adoption models, Social Media, e-Government and business models; sentiment analysis and m-payments are peripheral themes, yet topics like cloud computing and Open Data are emerging. The analysis highlights the shift of the research interest throughout the past decades, and the rise of new topics, comprising evidence that the field is expanding and evolving. Limitations of the approach and future work plans conclude the paper.

Introduction

The subject area of e-Business, e-Services and e-Society has delved into the topic of digitalization with regards to different facets of how we live, work, and conduct business [START_REF] Douligeris | Collaborative, trusted and privacy-aware e/m-services[END_REF]. Since the early 2000s when the dot com period hit its peak, the research interest has centered on the opportunities, challenges and implications that novel digital technologies introduce. The proliferation of such technologies, coupled with the rapid adoption of computer-based systems and the investments in network infrastructures, created a new wave of opportunities on digitalized processes [START_REF] Al-Sharhan | Challenges and Opportunities in the Digital Era[END_REF] [START_REF] Pappas | Digital transformation for a sustainable society in the 21st century[END_REF]. Along this progression, research has focused on issues related to each transition, examining obstacles of adoption from the individual to the industry level, value generating mechanisms, and the anticipated and unanticipated effects of integrating these technologies in everyday life. Now that the field counts 18 years, based on the number of the e-Business, e-Services and e-Society (I3E) conferences being organized, it is a good time to analyze its past and current state. Doing so will allow researchers to understand the evolution of the field over the past two decades and identify the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead. The most appropriate way to examine all publications presented in the conferences throughout these years is by applying a methodology that quantifies the core topics, the marginal contributions, the under-developed themes, and the forthcoming ideas that worth investing on, as well as how these topics are related and move between these states during the last 18 years. The main objective of this work is to capture, interpret and understand the big picture in the I3E domain from a quantified viewpoint. The research presented in this paper is a mapping study of the I3E field; it is a review that seeks to identify, not results, but linkages, shows the internal dynamics and structure of the domain, and pinpoints the topics with impact in the given discipline.

Towards facilitating this objective, this paper employs co-word analysis, and examines the associations and networks among concepts, ideas, and issues that have contributed to the evolution of the field to date [START_REF] Callon | From translations to problematic networks: An introduction to co-word analysis[END_REF]. Co-word analysis allows for and supports the identification of key patterns and trends that point to particular changes in research topics (e.g., emerging or declining interests) or specific research directions (e.g., paradigm shifts), using a graph of key-terms [START_REF] Hu | A co-word analysis of library and information science in china[END_REF], extracted directly from the metadata of the papers. Considering this, the present study maps the intellectual progress of the e-Business, e-Services and e-Society landscape, as reflected in the records of I3E conferences. The proceedings of this event provide a solid foundation to the related work published to date. During the past 18 years, considerable work has been published, allowing us to observe where the field currently stands, what are the challenges and opportunities the researchers are facing, and what are the potential driving forces in the near future. Accordingly, this work mainly contributes as follows:

• brings new insights on the intellectual mapping and progress of the area of I3E;

• raises awareness of the community on the mature, under-developed, emerging, or declining research themes; • highlights individual topics as popular, core or backbone topics within the discipline.

Background and Related work

The community of I3E is inherently diverse at the intersection of digital technologies, business, social sciences, big data, artificial intelligence, and network infrastructures [1][8]. Digital services can make a global impact and therefore, the understanding of the economic, technical, and social aspects of service development and innovation is a demand [START_REF] Li | Digital Services and Information Intelligence[END_REF]. The quantity and quality of the research activity within this community has been the topic to a variety of literature reviews, aiming to evaluate the research progress, impact and societal value, from different viewpoints (e.g., [9][12][26] [START_REF] Tamilmani | The battle of brain vs.heart: A literature review and meta-analysis of hedonic motivation use in utaut2[END_REF]).

For instance, persuasiveness of electronic Word-of-Mouth (eWOM) communications has received much attention from scholars because it can affect consumers' purchase attitudes, intention, decisions, and hence sales. A dedicated review of existing literature on the topic offered an overview of the determinants of eWOM persuasiveness, identified gaps in current research and provided directions for future research [START_REF] Ismagilova | Persuasiveness of ewom communications: Literature review and suggestions for future research[END_REF].

Another study reviewed inclusive eGovernment strategies and socially-aware eGovernment policies, and highlighted the need for a better understanding of the role of new intermediaries as actors that can impact the qualities of the citizens' and public-sector relationships [START_REF] Sorrentino | Intermediaries in e-inclusion: A literature review[END_REF]. The results recognized the usefulness of placing the intermediaries in an institutional framework and the authors proposed an agenda for future research.

More recently, the emergence and extended discussions about blockchain and what it can offer to businesses in relation to consumers (B2C), businesses (B2B) and governments (B2G) were under the lens of a systematic literature review of 40 articles from business, management and accounting peer review journals [START_REF] Grover | Blockchain for businesses: A systematic literature review[END_REF]. The findings demonstrate the role of blockchain as a facilitator of instant payments, trusted interfaces and traceability of goods for the consumers. Specifically, businesses can be benefited from blockchain in terms of machine-to-machine transactions, accounting, business process management and provenance traceability. New business opportunities also arise in government sector such as digital storage, authentication and maintenance of records, smart trust codification and new market for digital payment services and global commerce [START_REF] Grover | Blockchain for businesses: A systematic literature review[END_REF].

In another systematic review of 71 articles, social media applications over the marketing context were explored [START_REF] Alalwan | A systematic review of extant literature in social media in the marketing perspective[END_REF]. The study synopsized the main themes and trends, including the role of social media on advertising, the eWOM, customers' relationship management, and firms' brands and performance.

Apparently, despite the several literature reviews in the field, they are sparse and there is no previous attemptto the best of our knowledgethat maps the field as a whole. As I3E is a highly diverse and continuously evolving field, it is important to (a) identify and understand its core foundations that might contribute to reinforcing the community's identity; (b) detect under-represented or under-developed themes that require attention for their inclusion and success; (c) highlight research gaps in bridging theory and practice; and (d) find challenges and opportunities that hold the promise for improving the digitization processes. As the digitalization process and its outcomes in the 21st century accelerate transformation and the creation of sustainable societies, offering tremendous opportunities for revising current business methods and practices [START_REF] Pappas | Digital transformation for a sustainable society in the 21st century[END_REF], there is a critical need for understanding and evaluating the field as a whole.

Methodology

Data Collection

The data analyzed in this study were downloaded from the I3E Springer proceedings between 2001 and 2019. Overall, 835 peer-reviewed papers were produced within the community of I3E and published to-date. The keynote speeches, prefaces to the conference-, or track proceedings, as well as the papers that did not contain any keywords, were excluded from the analysis. From the collected papers, the author-assigned keywords were extracted from the metadata of each paper and were used as a unit of analysis. The keywords used for the description of the content of a publication can be seen as the basic building blocks of the structure of a research field; an article's keywords provide an adequate summary of its content, and thus can be utilized to reduce a large space of descriptors (i.e., article text) to a network graph of smaller related spaces (i.e., keywords) [START_REF] Cambrosio | Historical scientometrics? Mapping over 70 years of biological safety research with coword analysis[END_REF]. Although when authors choose keywords to describe their work those keywords can either be very generic or very specific, still, those keywords are human annotations on the content of the papers, reflecting human judgement and perspective.

The idea is to understand the conceptual structure and evolution of a field directly from the interaction between keywords: if two keywords co-occur within a paper, then the two topics they represent are related; higher co-word frequency implies stronger correlation in keywords pairs, further suggesting that two keywords are related to a specific theme [START_REF] Cambrosio | Historical scientometrics? Mapping over 70 years of biological safety research with coword analysis[END_REF]. The 835 papers are distributed per year of publication as shown in Fig. 1.

Data pre-processing

From the 835 published papers, the 531 had author-assigned keywords. Specifically, 2574 keywords (M=4.85 per article) were identified in total. The retrieved author-assigned keywords were manually pre-processed and standardized through merging words that convey similar meaning (e.g., "electronic government" and "e-Gov" were merged into "eGovernment"), fixing misspelled keywords (e.g., "goverment"), following a common spelling for UK and US terms (e.g., "behaviour" and "behavior"), and filtering broadly used terms (e.g., "IoT" and "Internet of Things"; "WoM" and "Word of Mouth") -following the approach recommended in [11][17], in a non-invasive manner. Keywords appearing in singular and plural forms of nouns and gerunds were also merged. At the end of this pre-processing, 1732 keywords (67.3% of the original dataset) were identified as unique and were subjected to further analysis. In order to be able to apply this method, papers from more than 5 years of research are required. The Kolmogorov Smirnoff test shown that the frequency of keywords follows a power-law distribution with an alpha of 1.87. Due to this heavy-tailedness, the research landscape of I3E is a scale-free network, with small number of popular terms acting as "hubs": they connect different topics, capture major research directions and influences in the field, and shape its intellectual structure [START_REF] Hu | A co-word analysis of library and information science in china[END_REF]. A scale-free network also suggests that major research themes can be detected with small subset of popular terms. A previous analysis in the HCI research field demonstrated that less than 100 keywords are enough to describe the intellectual progress of a field [START_REF] Liu | CHI 1994-2013: Mapping Two Decades of Intellectual Progress Through Co-word Analysis[END_REF]. Thus, in the present study we decided to include only those keywords that appear more than four times (n≥4) in the period 2001-2019. This decision was grounded on two facets: (a) the frequency of a term reflects its significance for a research community, i.e., the higher the frequency is, the more often the term attracts the researchers' attention/interest; and (b) the retained 65 keywords (total frequency=646, 37.3% of the total unique keywords) cover 461 (86.8%) of the 531 articles (with keywords) published. Furthermore, for the given datasets of terms and papers, n=4 is the minimum term frequency that achieves the highest inclusion of papers in the datasets. For example, for author-assigned keywords with n≥3, the retained keywords are N=150 and cover 88.9% of the papers, whereas for keywords with n≥5, N=57 keywords, covering 72.3% of the papers. Thus, with fewer yet highly frequent terms we could satisfactorily describe the I3E network of terms.

Data pre-processing

This study employs co-word analysis to shed light on the intellectual progress in the I3E field. Co-word analysis has been proposed as a content-analysis technique to map the strength of relations between terms in texts and to trace patterns and trends in term associated-ness [START_REF] Callon | From translations to problematic networks: An introduction to co-word analysis[END_REF]. The idea behind co-word analysis rests on the assumption that keyterms identified within an article (e.g., keywords) can adequately describe and communicate the content of that article; the co-occurrence of at-least two keywords in the same article indicates a linkage between the topics, i.e., a "theme" [START_REF] Callon | Co-word analysis as a tool for describing the network of interactions between basic and technological research: The case of polymer chemsitry[END_REF]. The main units of analysis are keywords, clusters (i.e., sets of keywords) and keyword networks [START_REF] Liu | CHI 1994-2013: Mapping Two Decades of Intellectual Progress Through Co-word Analysis[END_REF].

Co-word analysis is applied to reduce the broad network of keywords into a smaller network of related topics using graph theory [START_REF] Cobo | Science mapping software tools: Review, analysis, and cooperative study among tools[END_REF]. Graphs consist of nodes that represent the keywords, and links that represent the interactions between the nodes. Given a network of keywords, a combination of clustering, network analysis and strategic diagrams is used to model the conceptual structure of a field and to characterize it [START_REF] Callon | Co-word analysis as a tool for describing the network of interactions between basic and technological research: The case of polymer chemsitry[END_REF]. The graph theory concepts employed are centrality (i.e., the strength of the links from one research theme or cluster to others, indicating its significance in the development of the community [START_REF] Liu | CHI 1994-2013: Mapping Two Decades of Intellectual Progress Through Co-word Analysis[END_REF]) and density (i.e., the coherence of a cluster and a measure of a theme's development [START_REF] He | Knowledge discovery through co-word analysis[END_REF]). Combining centrality and density allows for the creation of two-dimensional strategic diagrams [START_REF] Callon | Co-word analysis as a tool for describing the network of interactions between basic and technological research: The case of polymer chemsitry[END_REF] (Fig. 2): the position of a cluster in the diagram corresponds to the importance of the cluster in the whole network (i.e., centralityx-axis) in relation to how well the theme of this cluster is developed (i.e., density -y-axis). As one can observe, Quadrant I (Q1) holds the motor themes (i.e., mainstream themes) that have strong centrality and high density. Quadrant II (Q2) contains themes that are internally well-structured but have weak external ties. These research themes are more specialized and peripheral to the mainstream work that is central in the research field. Quadrant III (Q3) includes the themes with low density and low centrality, that are either emerging, or disappearing. Finally, Quadrant IV (Q4) covers basic and transversal themes of considerable significance to the entire research network, i.e., central to the community, with potential to become important to the field as a whole.

Data Analysis

To identify the major research themes in the I3E domain, hierarchical clustering analysis on a correlation matrix with the retained terms was performed, using the Ward's method with Squared Euclidean Distance as the distance measurement [START_REF] Murtagh | Ward's hierarchical agglomerative clustering method: which algorithms implement ward's criterion?[END_REF]. The supervised clustering method allows to maintain content validity and cluster fitness for the highest number of clusters [11][17]. Each cluster represents a research theme or subfield. The co-word network was further analyzed using the following measures:

• Keywords: set of terms that constitute a cluster;

• Size: number of keywords in the cluster;

• Frequency: how many times all keywords (in a cluster) appear in the dataset;

• Co-word frequency: how many times at-least two keywords (from a cluster) appear in the same paper. Computing this results in a symmetrical co-occurrence matrix [START_REF] Leydesdorff | Co-occurrence matrices and their applications in information science: Extending aca to the web environment[END_REF]: values in the diagonal cells are term frequencies, and values in non-diagonal cells are co-word frequencies. High frequency of co-occurrence between terms indicates connection between the topics they represent; • Transitivity: how tightly connected is the cluster (the clustering coefficient), i.e., how close the keywords are to being a "clique". Transitivity is the frequency of loops of length three in the cluster; a loop of length three is a sequence of nodes x, y, z such that (x,y), (y,z) and (z,x) are edges of the graph [START_REF] Schank | Approximating clustering-coefficient and transitivity[END_REF]. The value range is [0, 1]; • Centrality: the degree of interaction of a theme with other parts of the network, i.e., how many other clusters a cluster connects to [START_REF] Callon | Co-word analysis as a tool for describing the network of interactions between basic and technological research: The case of polymer chemsitry[END_REF]; Centrality refers to a group of metrics that aim to quantify the "importance" of a particular node (or cluster) within a network (e.g., betweenness centrality, closeness centrality, eigenvector centrality, degree centrality) [START_REF] Newman | A measure of betweenness centrality based on random walks[END_REF]. Here we used betweenness centrality (C), with 0≤C≤1; • Density: how cohesive is the cluster of terms, i.e., the number of direct ties observed for the cluster divided by the maximum number of possible ones [START_REF] Callon | Co-word analysis as a tool for describing the network of interactions between basic and technological research: The case of polymer chemsitry[END_REF]. Density is graph-dependent and can be any positive real number [START_REF] De Laat | Investigating patterns of interaction in networked learning and computer-supported collaborative learning: A role for social network analysis[END_REF].

Based on the clustering results, we plotted the strategic diagram for the years 2001-2019 to visualize the cohesion and maturity of the I3E themes [START_REF] Callon | Co-word analysis as a tool for describing the network of interactions between basic and technological research: The case of polymer chemsitry[END_REF] [START_REF] Liu | CHI 1994-2013: Mapping Two Decades of Intellectual Progress Through Co-word Analysis[END_REF]. In addition, a keyword network graph was created from the keywords list. In this graph, each keyword is represented as a node, and the keywords that co-appear on a paper are linked together. By creating associations between keywords, multiple networks associated with different themes are also created. In this case, bridges are built between the nodes of keywords, to allow communication and information flow between isolated regions in the whole network. Those nodes are known as structural holes [START_REF] Nielsen | Sustainable development: the role of network communication[END_REF]. Keywords acting as structural holes serve as a "backbone" of a network: if removed, the network will lose its cohesion and will disintegrate into separated and unconnected concepts. Thus, the network's core-periphery structure needs to be computed, to determine which nodes are part of a densely connected core (i.e., with a higher number of bridges), or a sparsely connected periphery [START_REF] Rombach | Core-periphery structure in networks (revisited)[END_REF]. Core nodes are reasonably well-connected to peripheral nodes, while peripheral nodes are sparingly connected to a core node or to each other. A node belongs to a core only if it is well-connected to other core nodes and to peripheral nodes [START_REF] Rombach | Core-periphery structure in networks (revisited)[END_REF]. A follow-up core-periphery analysis was performed to spot the core research topics from the perspective of the whole network. In this analysis, keywords were categorized according to their popularity, coreness (i.e., connectedness with other topics) and constraint (i.e., backbone). The whole approach is illustrated in Fig. 3.

Results

Mapping of the field

The analysis on the retained 65 author-assigned keywords led to 14 clusters (labeled as C1-C14, in Table 1), with each cluster representing a research theme or a sub-field. In order (a) to better understand the relative ``position'' of these clusters within the overall I3E field (i.e., what is the distance from each other in terms of cohesion and maturity of research themes they correspond to); and (b) to create the conceptual structure of the I3E discipline, we constructed strategic diagrams (plots) using the centrality and density of each cluster [4][17]. The overall results can be seen in reading Fig. 4 and Table 1 together. In the plots, both axes are centralized to the average centrality and average density respectively (i.e., 0.247, 1.361). The overall network's density was 0.667. As it can be observed from Fig. 4, one motor theme (Mainstream theme), represented by cluster C5 (i.e., literature review, TAM, adoption) is detected using the human descriptors (keywords) of the papers. In other words, the field is in general fragmented, with only one theme having received substantial attention from the community, in terms of human annotations. Furthermore, in Fig. 4, the author-assigned keywords indicate that the community has few internally well-structured research themes, yet with weak external ties (Ivory Towers), acting as peripheral nodes to the global network (i.e., connect only to core nodes, yet not necessarily to mainstream topics only), and classified in clusters C2, C3 and C4 (e.g., mPayments, Digital Payment, Twitter, Sentiment Analysis, UTAUT2, Perceived Risk). Those topics appear to have high-density, i.e., the clustering coefficient is high and the topics within each of the cluster are very well connected to each other, but they lack strong ties with topics that are external to them. The following-up core-periphery analysis will provide insight on that issue.

Regarding the themes that are either emerging or disappearing (Chaos/Unstructured), the author-assigned keywords revealed that researchers have developed a considerable number of topics within a sense -"marginal" interest in the I3E network, classified in clusters C6, C7, C8, C9, C12 and C13 (e.g., eWOM, online Reviews, motivation, information Seeking, eServices, Cloud Computing, SaaS, Business Intelligence, eBusiness models, Open Data, information technology), as illustrated in Fig. 4. The term "marginal" here is used to describe both the cases of "close-to-disappearing" and "nearly rising" topics, i.e., topics that either tend to no-longer attract major interest, or they have recently started to attract attention, but have not yet been well-developed.

Finally, a substantial number of transversal themes (Bandwagon) have been detected as well, i.e., themes that are strongly linked to specific research interests throughout the network yet are only weakly linked together. These are categorized in the clusters C1 (e.g., customer engagement, facebook, social media, use and gratification theory, social networks), C10 (e.g., social commerce, WoM, trust, privacy) C11 (e.g., eCommerce, interoperability, interorganizational system, security, supply chain, eBusiness, web services, QoS) and C14 (e.g., IoT, Smart Cities, artificial intelligence, eGovernment, b2b).

Keywords network map

A network of keywords demonstrates the relationships among different themes; to better understand and visualize the interactions between the research themes in Table 1, network analysis was used to create a granular map of the keywords. Fig. 5 displays the results. Each node in the graph represents a keyword that is linked to other keywords that appear on the same paper. The size of the nodes is proportional to the frequency of the keywords, the color of the node corresponds to the cluster the keyword has been classified in, and the thickness of the links between the nodes is proportional to the cooccurrence correlation for that pair of keywords. To reduce visual clutter, a centralized subset of the complete network is illustrated, omitting isolated nodes and keywords with less than 3 strong ties, that would lead to a highly disconnected network. High core value indicates a topic that is well connected to other topics. Lower constraint suggests a keyword that brings together otherwise isolated topics ("bridges"). Burts constraint (i.e., Constraint) [START_REF] Burt | Structural holes and good ideas[END_REF] is commonly used for this purpose (accurately speaking, the lack of it, because the larger the constraint, the less structural opportunities a node may have for bridging structural holes). Topics with high Popularity and Coreness and low Constraint can be considered as driving forces for advancements in the field: without these topics, the field of I3E would be completely fragmented.

Discussion and Conclusions

The I3E conference on e-Business, e-Services and e-Society has grown and evolved over the years. The mere fact that the conference has managed to keep and expand its active community of researchers for almost two decades, demonstrates that the field is of increased and growing relevance. The objective and contribution of this paper is twofold: (a) to have a methodological contribution in the field (i.e., the method presented in this paper has not been employed in this research domain before); and (b) to demonstrate and apply a quantified (objective) methodology that is beyond the qualitative (subjective) perspective of a systematic literature review, aiming to shed light to the maturation of the field throughout the past two decades and to map the research streams in the field, how they are connected, and detect those that would benefit for more focus or integration. The analysis conducted in this study highlighted the major themes that have dominated the researchers' interest, as well as those that are likely to be the core focus of future studies. The co-word analysis of the I3E proceedings to date revealed some interesting findings regarding the progression of the field as a whole.

In coherence with the title of the conference, the three main (i.e., motor) themes have been on e-business (i.e., e-commerce), e-services (i.e., e-government) and e-society (i.e., social media) as is depicted in Fig. 5, and in line with previous systematic literature reviews [START_REF] Alalwan | A systematic review of extant literature in social media in the marketing perspective[END_REF] [START_REF] Sorrentino | Intermediaries in e-inclusion: A literature review[END_REF]. The underlying topic that has linked these three focus areas has been adoption models, examining the factors concerning individuals, users and organizations intention to adopt such systems, also noted in previous studies [8][1]. This trend also indicates the maturity of these technologies, with substantial research still concerning why and how adoption of emerging digital technologies can be enhanced.

An intriguing finding is the emergence of big data as a linkage between the main three pillars (Figs. 4 and5). Research themes that fall within the "Chaos/Unstructured" quadrant will attract attention in the years to come: as more and more people are moving from the adoption of digital technologies to the routinization in everyday life, so is the amount of generated data increasing. This has led to a surge of research on the potential of big data analytics for extracting actionable insight confirming previous findings [START_REF] Pappas | Digital transformation for a sustainable society in the 21st century[END_REF].

As seen from the network map (Fig. 5), big datain particular with relevance to egovernment and social mediais an area with much future interest, also highlighted in [START_REF] Janssen | Open and big data management and innovation[END_REF]. The use of user generated data, and the integration with social media platforms offers an interesting perspective into the generated insight, the services that can be built based on this insight, as well as the implications and ethical issues that accompany such ventures. Big data and business analytics ecosystems may pave the way towards digital transformation and sustainable societies [START_REF] Pappas | Big data and business analytics ecosystems: paving the way towards digital transformation and sustainable societies[END_REF]. Furthermore, the strong link between ecommerce and social media (Table 1), denotes the increased prevalence of social commerce efforts over the last years (e.g., [START_REF] Mikalef | Determining consumer engagement in word-of-mouth: Trust and network ties in a social commerce setting[END_REF]). We witness an increased number of social media platforms featuring commercial aspects, with some notable examples being Facebook and Instagram. As more vendors utilize these platforms, trust emerges as a core aspect [START_REF] Grover | Blockchain for businesses: A systematic literature review[END_REF], both regarding the sales side and the products featured on these, as well as on the data exchanged and utilized for marketing and sales promotions [START_REF] Douligeris | Collaborative, trusted and privacy-aware e/m-services[END_REF]. Recent events (e.g. the Cambridge Analytica scandal) surfaced issues about privacy violation and use of data by third-parties which have come to the attention of the general population. As social media and e-commerce vendors become increasingly more integrated, data sharing and ownership issues will be brought in the spotlight of research/practice.

While these are some of the major trends that can be detected throughout an analysis of the field covered by the I3E conference, there are many more sub-fields that are likely to be fruitful areas for future research. Our ambition was to illustrate some of these as well as to identify the core areas that have received the center light of attention by researchers over the past two decades. Our analysis indicates that the three pillars of the I3E conference are becoming increasingly more fussed, and that future research is likely to bridge all three domains to derive important research and practical knowledge.

Fig. 1 .

 1 Fig. 1. Number of I3E publications per year for the period 2001-2019.3.2Data pre-processing

Fig. 2 .

 2 Fig. 2. Number of I3E publications per year for the period 2001-2019.As one can observe, Quadrant I (Q1) holds the motor themes (i.e., mainstream themes) that have strong centrality and high density. Quadrant II (Q2) contains themes that are internally well-structured but have weak external ties. These research themes are more specialized and peripheral to the mainstream work that is central in the

Fig. 3 .

 3 Fig. 3. Research Methodology.

Fig. 4 .

 4 Fig. 4. Strategic diagram for I3E for the period 2001-2019.

Fig. 5 .

 5 Fig. 5. Keywords network map for I3E for the period 2001-2019.Finally, core-periphery analysis was performed to identify the core research topics, from a whole-network perspective, as individual keywords, regardless of the cluster they belong to. The analysis yielded 10 topics in each of the categories (Table2):• Popularity: how frequently a keyword is used;• Coreness: how connected is a keyword with other topics; value range: [0-1];• Constraint: how connected is a keyword with other otherwise distinct topics (i.e., if the topic creates a backbone of the field); constraint is measured on a [0-1] scale.

Table 1 .

 1 Clusters of topics in I3E for the period 2001-2019.

	Q	ID Keywords (the most frequent in bold)	Size Freq 1 CW-Fr. 1	T 1	C 1	D 1
	Q1	C5 adoption, literature review, TAM, India, use	5	45	82	0.90	0.43	1.50
	Q2	C2 m-payments, digital payment	2	10	20	N/A	0.11	3.00
	Q2	C3 twitter, sentiment analysis	2	18	27	N/A	0.19	4.00
	Q2	C4 UTAUT2, information systems, perceived risk	3	16	28	1.00	0.14	2.00
	Q2-Q3 C12 Big Data, data quality, information sharing	3	26	27	1.00	0.19	1.33
	Q3	C6 eWOM, motivation, e-Services, information seeking,	5	28	39	0.87	0.18	1.00
		online reviews
	Q3	C7 Cloud Computing, SaaS, eBusiness models, business in-	4	17	23	1.00	0.16	1.00
		telligence
	Q3	C8 Open Data, benefits, usability, evaluation, AHP, public	6	33	41	0.81	0.13	0.80
		services
	Q3	C9 SME, mobile devices, marketing, technology adoption,	5	28	28	0.33	0.13	0.50
		CRM
	Q3	C13 business model, strategy, value, information technology	4	29	30	0.33	0.24	0.50
	Q4	C1 Social Media, customer engagement, Facebook, SNS,	7	86	108	0.87	0.49	1.29
		ICT, Social Networks, Use and Gratification Theory
	Q4	C10 privacy, Social Commerce, WoM, trust	4	35	44	0.87	0.26	0.80
	Q4	C11 e-Commerce, collaboration, interoperability, interorgani-	9	86	93	0.53	0.46	0.67
		zational system, security, supply chain, e-Business, web
		services, QoS
	Q4	C14 e-Government, Smart Cities, artificial intelligence, Inter-	6	61	62	0.33	0.35	0.67
		net, B2B

1 Freq: Total frequency of all keywords; CW-Fr: Co-word Frequency; T: Transitivity; C: Centrality; D: Density

Table 2 .

 2 Summary of popular, core and backbone topics of I3E in 2001-2019.

	#	Popular Topic	Frequency Core Topic	Coreness Backbone Topic	Constraint
	1	Social Media	51	Social Media	0.45	Social Media	0.19
	2	e-Government	37	e-Commerce	0.30	TAM	0.19
	3	e-Commerce	36	TAM	0.29	Trust	0.21
	4	Big Data	18	Adoption	0.28	Big Data	0.21
	5	Business Model	17	e-Government	0.27	e-Commerce	0.22
	6	Adoption	15	Trust	0.25	Adoption	0.23
	7	e-Business	15	Big Data	0.22	e-Government	0.23
	8	Trust	13	Facebook	0.13	Motivation	0.24
	9	Smart Cities	12	Open Data	0.09	Literature Review	0.26
	10 TAM	12	Twitter	0.09	Technology adoption	0.26


Raoul Hentschel
email: raoul.hentschel@tu-dresden.de

Susanne Strahringer
email: susanne.strahringer@tu-dresden.de

A Broker-based Framework for the Recommendation of Cloud Services: A Research Proposal

Keywords: Cloud Computing, Cloud Brokering, Guidance Support System, Multi-sided Platform, Matchmaking Platform

Finding and comparing appropriate cloud services that best fit cloud service consumer requirements can be a complex, time-consuming and cost-intensive process, especially for small and medium-sized enterprises. Since there is no "one-fits-all" cloud service provider, companies face the challenge of selecting and combining services from different vendors to meet all their requirements. Therefore, this paper calls for the design of a cloud brokering framework that would enable faster and easier selection of cloud services by recommending appropriate services through a matchmaking system. Drawing on previously conducted studies and considering current issues and practical experiences both from provider and user perspectives, we propose a framework that would identify, rank and recommend cloud services from multiple modules and components to individual consumers. Furthermore, we contribute an early-stage design of a cloud broker framework that considers cloud-service consumers' sourcing preferences while making new cloud-sourcing decisions and that can be used in the selection and adoption phase of implementing cloud services and/or as part of a multicloud strategy.

Introduction

Cloud computing (CC) is a driving force in the current digitization debate that offers companies of all sizes new benefits such as consuming computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications, and services) with low/minimal entry costs, payper-use options, great flexibility, and scalability. Due to the recent proliferation of CC, the number of cloud services on the market is increasing rapidly. Therefore, the selection and implementation of suitable cloud services is a challenging, knowledge-intensive process that requires widespread participation and ownership among heterogeneous stakeholder groups (e.g., business managers, IT units, etc.) [START_REF] Winkler | Horizontal Allocation of Decision Rights for On-Premise Applications and Software-as-a-Service[END_REF]. The variety of available services is further complicated by a lack of informational transparency concerning product characteristics, technology, QoS, pricing and their intercorrelations (e.g., price/quality trade-offs). This makes it difficult to compare cloud services and select the option that best fits the cloud service consumers' (CSC) requirements. Finding a suitable cloud service provider (CSP) that matches all the CSC's requirements is a complex, time-consuming and cost-intensive process that can prevent the adoption of CC especially in small and medium-sized enterprises (SME) [START_REF] Yang | A Descriptive Literature Review and Classification of Cloud Computing Research[END_REF]. The reasons for this are manifold: a lack of universal definitions and standards for cloud services [START_REF] Höfer | Cloud computing services: Taxonomy and comparison[END_REF], the challenge of comparing the characteristics and performance metrics of cloud services over different maturity levels and quality standards, and different naming conventions for the same services, an understanding of which requires domain-specific knowledge of CSCs [START_REF] De Vaulx | Cloud computing service metrics description[END_REF][START_REF] Slawik | A Domain Specific Language and a Pertinent Business Vocabulary for Cloud Service Selection[END_REF]. As a result, CSCs increasingly need guidance support systems [START_REF] Morana | A review of the nature and effects of guidance design features[END_REF] that enable faster, easier and more reliable cloud services selection by helping SMEs choose (the best) services from a wealth of alternatives. We define these alternatives as service configuration options (SCO). To the best of our knowledge, there is currently no approach available that specifically supports the (semi-)automated identification and recommendation of cloud service alternatives for SMEs using a cloud brokering and matchmaking system. In order to address this problem, we propose a cloud service broker framework called "ViBROS" as a starting point for supporting CSCs in their decision-making process by recommending appropriate cloud services based on CSC requirements using dynamic and extensible matching methods. Thus, our research question (RQ) is: How should a cloud-service brokering framework be designed to support cloud service consumers in SMEs in the selection and adoption phase of implementing cloud services?

In order to answer this RQ, the remainder of the paper is organized as follows: the introduction and definition of the problem included above (1) are followed by the theoretical background (2) and the proposal of a new framework [START_REF] Höfer | Cloud computing services: Taxonomy and comparison[END_REF]. The paper ends with the conclusion and future recommendations section (4).

2

Theoretical Background

Cloud Computing

CC is an alternative approach to IT sourcing that enables companies to access a shared pool of managed and scalable IT resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications, and services) that are accessible via the internet on a pay-per-use basis without necessitating long-term investments [START_REF] Yang | A Descriptive Literature Review and Classification of Cloud Computing Research[END_REF]. CC services are typically classified by the type of service differentiated by a given resource (e.g., application (SaaS), platform (PaaS) and infrastructure (IaaS) level) [START_REF] Mell | The NIST Definition of Cloud Computing[END_REF]. In addition to the more technical characteristics, more business-oriented classifications have also emerged to differentiate these services from one another. Böhm et al. [START_REF] Böhm | Towards a Generic Value Network for Cloud Computing[END_REF] identified eight common market actors that interact in a cloud value network. Additionally, the NIST defines five major actors: cloud consumer, cloud provider, cloud auditor, cloud broker, and cloud carrier where each entity (a person or organization) performs tasks in CC [START_REF] Hogan | Nist cloud computing standards roadmap[END_REF].

Cloud Brokering and Two-sided Platforms

A cloud broker (CB) is an entity who acts as an intermediary between the CSP and the CSC and performs tasks that involve the selection, integration, or delivery of cloud services. Additionally, CBs also fulfill functions such as aggregating information concerning goods and fostering trust between cloud providers and cloud consumers [START_REF] Hogan | Nist cloud computing standards roadmap[END_REF]. There are many examples of markets in which two or more groups interact via intermediaries or platforms to benefit each other and potentially create cross-platform network effects (e.g., Airbnb, Uber, etc.) [START_REF] Armstrong | Competition in two-sided markets[END_REF][START_REF] Boudreau | Let a thousand flowers bloom? An early look at large numbers of software app developers and patterns of innovation[END_REF]. All these so-called multi-sided platforms (MSP) have one thing in common: they can only be successful when the "chicken-andegg problem" can be solved by convincing both sides of the market to engage their services [START_REF] Rochet | Platform Competition in Two-Sided Markets[END_REF]. Matchmaking platforms, such as cloud brokering platforms, can also be seen as two-sided in the sense that the matching "platform" is more attractive when more participants on the other end of the market participate [START_REF] Rysman | The economics of two-sided markets[END_REF][START_REF] Caillaud | Chicken & Egg: Competition among Intermediation Service Providers[END_REF][START_REF] Damiano | Competing Matchmaking[END_REF]; hence, a successful CB will be of value for both consumers and vendors [START_REF] Rask | Motives for e-marketplace Participation: Differences and Similarities between Buyers and Suppliers[END_REF]. Two of the main benefits of CBs from a consumer's point of view are its ability to minimize search time, thereby saving costs, and its providing an opportunity to interact with an expert instead of working with numerous CSPs [START_REF] Bakos | A Strategic Analysis of Electronic Marketplaces[END_REF]. Consumers also benefit from the support provided for activities such as the selection, implementation and management of cloud services and can thereby avoid being "locked-in" to a single provider. For CSPs, cooperation with a CB may enhance market visibility and result in a higher rate of revenue growth [START_REF] Evans | Some Empirical Aspects of Multi-sided Platform Industries[END_REF]. The need for brokering mechanisms for cloud services first arises when using cloud federation architectures, such as Intercloud [START_REF] Hsu | Algorithms and Architectures for Parallel Processing, Part I[END_REF] or Stratos [START_REF] Pawluk | Introducing STRATOS: A cloud broker service[END_REF]. There are various concepts about and frameworks for cloud brokering that have been discussed in prior research [START_REF] Demchenko | Intercloud Architecture Framework for Heterogeneous Cloud Based Infrastructure Services Provisioning On-Demand[END_REF], including those dealing with service intermediation between CSPs and CSCs [START_REF] Hsu | Algorithms and Architectures for Parallel Processing, Part I[END_REF][START_REF] Nair | Towards Secure Cloud Bursting, Brokerage and Aggregation[END_REF]. However, most of the literature focuses on building cloud brokerage systems where users either provide low-level specifications (e.g. resource requirements for applications or QoS requirements for applications) that are measurable and comparable functional requirements [START_REF] Anastasi | QBROKAGE: A genetic approach for QoS cloud brokering[END_REF] or are limited to technical issues that can be solved using multiple-criteria decision-making (MCDM) methods [START_REF] Cochrane | Multiple Criteria Decision Making[END_REF]. However, the literature does not consider organizational or environmental aspects. Additionally, we were unable to find any approaches specific to the needs of SMEs [START_REF] Hentschel | Critical Success Factors for the Implementation and Adoption of Cloud Services in SMEs[END_REF]. We argue that startups and SMEs need cloud brokering systems that are not only designed for large cloud implementation projects but are also better aligned with the nature of cloud services (e.g. flexible, automated) in terms of type and cost. Also, the selection and integration of new services is a very dynamic process that will affect daily business operations.

Proposal of a New Cloud Brokering Framework

The goal of our research is to address the gap in the literature and, as a first step, to propose a framework that considers the functional and non-functional requirements of cloud consumers on the technical, organizational and environmental levels. This will enable SMEs to make a reasonable decision about CSPs, even without domain-specific knowledge, while achieving lower costs and saving time in comparison to traditional consultants and cloud brokers. Second, we propose a prototype that enables a (semi-)automated selection of cloud services as part of a recommendation system. To do so, we follow a design science research (DSR) approach. DSR is an important paradigm in IS research as it serves as a guideline for the process of constructing socio-technical artifacts in the IS domain [START_REF] Gregor | Positioning and Presenting Design Science Research for Maximum Impact[END_REF]. We follow the process of Peffers et al. [START_REF] Peffers | A Design Science Research Methodology for Information Systems Research[END_REF] for creating design science artifacts and then map these artifacts onto the digital innovation roles in DSR, as proposed by [START_REF] Hevner | Roles of Digital Innovation in Design Science Research[END_REF]. In order to adequately consider current issues and practical experiences, the requirements of SMEs for such a framework were analyzed from both the provider and user perspectives in a previous work [START_REF] Hentschel | Critical Success Factors for the Implementation and Adoption of Cloud Services in SMEs[END_REF][START_REF] Hentschel | Current cloud challenges in Germany: the perspective of cloud service providers[END_REF]. Based on the findings of that piece and an extensive literature review on existing frameworks, we have iteratively developed the first version of our Virtual Broker as a Service Framework, called ViBROS, as part of our design-oriented approach (see Fig. 1). ViBROS discovers and ranks cloud services for CSCs based on one or more Decision Components and filters the results to finally make a recommendation at the user's request. Inputs are (feature) requirements and a textual description in natural language of the desired features of the cloud service. These provided inputs (Requirements Components) can then be prioritized and processed by a discovery service called ViBROS Cloud Matchmaker that uses the back-end Decision Components for the subsequent matchmaking. The Decision Components are defined by the platform owner and can be dynamically added and/or removed and are accessible via API (e.g., RESTful Web services). Each component can be addressed and enriched with information provided by CSPs.

Finally, the ViBROS Cloud Matchmaker generates options determined by users' preferences, makes a pairwise comparison of every SCO using the AHP method, and recommends those that are suitable. It thus finds a match between the appropriate cloud services and the SME looking for one. Since not every CSC is willing or able to sign a contract with a CSP immediately, the CSC can also evaluate the cloud SCOs proposed by a neutral expert (i.e., consultants, integrators, etc.). Thus, the expert has the option to support the consumer in steps that go beyond the selection of a CSP (e.g. in the implementation of services) and thereby generates more business. As a result, the CSC receives a bundle of suitable cloud services, ranked according to their specific suitability with the option of having them evaluated by an expert, before finally selecting one or more cloud services to implement.

Conclusion and Future Work

The current state of our research shows that many existing frameworks only provide partial guidance in the selection phase of cloud services. This research-in-progress article addresses this gap and proposes a new framework called ViBROS as a starting point for providing a more reliable and cost-efficient approach for SMEs to use while selecting appropriate cloud services. Since there is no "one-fits-all" CSP, CSCs can benefit from receiving recommendations for cloud SCOs, which will therefore reduce search costs while taking sourcing preferences (e.g., requirements, priorities, etc.) into consideration in the selection and adoption phases. Researchers can use key components of the framework to support their own cloud brokering problems. In future work, the back-end Decision Components and Cloud Matchmaker algorithms of the framework must be designed in more detail in order to instantiate a prototype of ViBROS. Also, the handling of the heterogeneity of cloud services must be addressed in more detail. Currently, the framework is not limited to a particular CC service type (SaaS, PaaS, IaaS). However, an initial focus on one of these types in order to limit the number of SCOs could be beneficial for a first prototypical implementation.

Fig. 1 .

 1 Fig. 1. Virtual Broker as a Service Framework (ViBROS)