Faculty of Business and Finance academics, namely Assoc Prof Dr Lee Voon Hsien, Dr Leong Lai Ying and Hew Jun Jie were recently awarded the “Most Downloaded Article” award by Expert Systems with Applications (ESWA), Elsevier, USA.

The award-winning research titled “Wearable payment: A deep learning-based dual-stage SEM-ANN analysis”, was selected based on the numbers of downloads in the last 90 days. The research was co-authored with UCSI University Malaysia’s academics, Dr Garry Tan Wei Han and Prof. Ooi Keng Boon.

The research highlighted the antecedents influencing wearable payment usage intention, the applicability of perceived aesthetics and technology readiness on wearable payments, the effectiveness of Mobile Technology Acceptance Model on wearable payments, and proposed a dual-stage SEM-ANN analysis with deep learning. The results of the research aimed to provide valuable insights to payment companies and smart wearable device manufacturers to come up with plans and marketing strategies to convince potential adopters to adopt wearable payment, guiding marketers to design a more successful wearable payment solution.

The researchers also further explained, “Theoretically, the newly integrated theoretical model that incorporates Mobile Technology Acceptance Model, Fashion Theory, and Technology Readiness Theory could help ascertain the relative significance of certain determinants, providing a clearer insight on the acceptance of wearable payment among consumers.”

“Based on the 899 downloads within a short period of time, it shows that readers are very interested in reading the paper. Therefore, to be given this award is certainly an honour for us, as well as a recognition that will boost our research career as it gives us more exposure to the research world. As an academic, being active in research is important because it provides me with a dynamic platform to continuously improve my knowledge through the researches we conducted. It also allows me to remain updated in my research areas and enables me to share research knowledge with my students. In addition, I can also guide my postgraduate students in terms of research and publications,” said Dr Leong.

“My advice for other researchers who aspire to obtain this achievement is to pay attention to the title and contributions of the research paper.  The title should be attractive and the contributions should be substantial enough as this will be the “ingredients” that researchers look for when deciding whether to download a research paper or not.  Also, if possible the keywords and abstract must be well-written and “catchy” enough to entice readers to download and read the full paper for more details,” advised Dr Leong.

Dr Lee, on the other hand, advised, “More often than not, research is not a sprint, but a marathon. Hence, it is important to adopt a "one step at a time" approach. Specifically in the context of research, this can be in the form of writing a manageable number of words each day. It is vital to set a schedule in view of all the other responsibilities that we have. However, setting a schedule is only the start as sticking to it is equally (if not more) important. Overall, the key attributes needed to obtain success in research are consistency, perseverance, focus, commitment and discipline. Apart from that, I would also like to take this opportunity to thank UTAR for its constant support given to academics in pursuing research excellence. In fact, this paper was supported by UTAR Research Fund 2017 Cycle 2 (Project number: IPSR/RMC/UTARRF/2017-C2/L03; Vote number: 6200/LL2). Without this research grant from the university, this achievement would not be possible.”

She also added, “To get published in ESWA is already a challenge as ESWA has an acceptance rate of 13%. Furthermore, it is a reputable journal ranked Level Three in the Academic Journal Guide 2018 and Quartile 1 by Clarivate Analytics (for the categories of "COMPUTER SCIENCE, ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE", "ENGINEERING, ELECTRICAL & ELECTRONIC" and "OPERATIONS RESEARCH & MANAGEMENT SCIENCE"). This is a strong indication that ESWA only publishes good quality original research papers that are highly regarded. Furthermore, to have our paper stand out as one of the most downloaded articles among so many other articles (there were 602 articles published so far in 2020) published by ESWA makes it all the more momentous. Overall, this award is significant as it acknowledges that our paper is recognised as highly relevant by the readers at the international stage.”

Dr Lee also mentioned that research helps them discover and understand new knowledge in their respective field. “This is because the process involves identifying the knowledge gaps present and the measures to be taken to overcome the limitations of the present knowledge. In short, research is significant in the further enhancement of one’s knowledge. With regards to the positive impact of teaching, researchers can link their findings to the relevant courses or provide undergraduates with the opportunity to participate in research in that subject matter. Overall, through research, scholars and academics will be better equipped to share new ideas, discoveries and knowledge with their students via first-hand experience,” explained Dr Lee.

Whereas for Hew, he said, “This glory means a lot to my PhD journey. Other than supporting my PhD with UTAR Staff Scholarship, UTAR has also provided me with a good research environment and great supervisors, namely Dr Lee and Dr Leong. Therefore, I am also grateful to have them involve me in this research as I have indeed learnt much throughout this research. One of the objectives of the PhD programme is to train the students in terms of research skills, and I think I am moving towards this objective day by day. It is my pleasure to work under them and, therefore, would like to dedicate this glory to them.”

ESWA is currently indexed with Clarivate Analytics under the Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE) and carries an impact factor of 5.452 (in JCR-2019, released June 2020).