Professor Ooi adds on to his list of accolades by receiving Most Cited Paper certificate.

UCSI University’s Faculty of Business and Information Science dean Professor Dr Ooi Keng Boon has added to his list of accolades by receiving the certificate of ‘Most Cited Paper’ by Emerald Publishing Limited in the journal Industrial Management & Data Systems.

The paper entitled “What catalyses mobile apps usage intention: an empirical analysis” is significant in that it attempts to resolve the issue of underdeveloped Malaysian mobile applications (apps) industry in which the locally developed apps are showing a low acceptance rate.

The paper is co-authored with Hew Jun Jie, Lee Voon Hsien (Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman) and Professor June Wei (University of West Florida).

This study is expected to benefit the mobiles apps developers by letting them to know what motivates the mobile apps usage intention among mobile users.

Theoretically, this study contributes to the existing body of knowledge by examining the mobile apps usage intention with an integrated model that combines Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology 2 and educational level as a moderator.

“I am happy to see that some of the recommendations actually reflect the mobile apps nowadays. For instance, as habit is the most significant motivator of mobile apps usage intention, the paper has suggested the mobile apps developers to directly transfer something that people have been using in the past into mobile apps,” said Prof Ooi.  

“One notable example is Pokémon GO. The app developer attempted to transfer the popular Pokémon game back in 1990s from Game Boy into a mobile game, and without any doubt the game has been getting more popular since its inception,” he added.

“This award definitely means a lot to me and UCSI as a whole. Citation impact is one of the key components in the QS and Times Higher Education (THE) world university rankings. Hence, with a greater citation impact, I am confident that UCSI can do better in terms of university rankings in many years to come,” he shared.

Ooi’s success is most certainly encouraging to his colleagues. In his words, “A most cited award takes time, usually several years, as citation counts have to be accumulated throughout the years.

“Same thing goes to the publication process in which we sometimes need to wait for a year in order to get a paper published. In light of this, I would like to encourage my fellow colleagues that waiting is actually part and parcel of our life as an academician, so don’t give up easily!” he advised.

The journal Industrial Management & Data Systems has an impact factor of 2.948 based on the Journal Citation Report (JCR) in 2017 and a citation score of 3.43.