نشریه سیاست نامه علم و فناوری
سال دهم شماره 3 (پیاپی 32، پاییز 1399)

Iran's oil refineries have faced severe competitiveness challenges, and technical renewal is their main option. To this end, the first step is to determine the requirements of technology. While gasoline production in Iran will soon double the consumption, the main focus of refining industry reforms has been on increasing gasoline production. The paper offers solutions to regenerate Iran's refining industry in light of recent technological transformations in the energy industry. Thus, two main areas for the Iranian oil refining sector can be considered: (1) "mining the residues of refinery and their conversion into products of distillation," and (2) "mining the sulfur level of refinery residue." As a result, cost-effective upgrades technologies (slurry hydrocracking) and delayed coking will be key options for refining domestic oil refinery. Due to the unavailability of slurry-bed hydrocracking technologies, this solution can be implemented at the Iranian Oil Refineries by combining both delayed coking and fixed bed hydrocracking (ISOMAX) technologies. Consequently, the simultaneous use of delayed coking and fixed bed hydrocracking (ISOMAX) technologies is considered a suitable and applicable residue upgrading combination.

The Internet of Things is a new generation of advances in technology that has attracted the attention of many world researchers in recent years. Since the spread of new technologies affects various facets of society, it poses many challenges for governments, making it necessary for researchers to investigate the challenges in a variety of social fields, particularly policymaking. As one of the most significant ICT trends in the coming years, this technology will bring a broad range of issues.  Active exposure to this technology requires the provision of scientific and research infrastructure for policymaking. To this end, the prerequisite is to identify research agendas and research areas for the field researchers. When a new technology arrives, the primary question posed by policymaking academics is what challenges the government confronts in the safe development of this technology? Secondly, what theoretical and scientific support to better policymaking should be provided? Not only is the volume of social and policy research conducted on the Internet of Things not as satisfactory as a new technology, but also most studies consider the applications and study one of the dimensions of the challenges that may be facing in the future. This is while, in the first step, we need to answer the questions mentioned above, decide the research priorities, and provide researchers with a roadmap to concentrate on solving the right problems and balanced growth in this area. With a descriptive-analytical approach, and using the analytical framework and functional approach of the National Innovation System, this research aims to identify the knowledge issues of policymaking for the Internet of Things and direct policymaking research in this field. This study aims to examine other countries' experiences in directing their national research and innovation program using library resources and provide guidance to researchers interested in the evolving Internet of Things technology. Finally, the goals are categorized under the policy, structural, and technological approaches.

Today, Blockchain technology is seen as a revolutionary technology in the business environment, and the peak of its prosperity was the introduction of Bitcoin in 2008. Blockchain networks allow centralized databases and general ledgers to be replaced, protected, and distributed databases to network members recognized as network verifiers. The most important part of the Blockchain network structure is the consensus algorithm, which determines how a new block between all nodes in the verifying network is agreed to be appended. In other words, consensus algorithms decide rules and protocols that define which block and by which member to connect to the main chain, and prevent parallel and conflicting structures. Consensus algorithms can be divided into two principal classes. The first category is proof-based consensus algorithms, which allow the nodes that enter the verifying network to demonstrate that they are more eligible and better than the others to do the new block that is to be added. The second group is consensus algorithms focused on voting, allowing nodes in the network to share their results from checking a transaction or a new block before making the final decision. In this paper, we discuss consensus algorithms that have been researched and are currently being applied in some well-known Blockchain applications, while discussing and comparing key features in various aspects.

Access to finance plays a key role in developing small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and entrepreneurial activities. Despite the critical role in economic growth and entrepreneurial activities, access to finance is the main problem. Better access to financial resources for a company's formation or development leads to better allocation of production resources, leading to rapid economic growth. Given the various theories about the factors influencing access to finance, there is still a lack of a systematic view of the factors affecting finance access. It implies that research areas are not yet saturated in this research field. Policymakers, therefore, need to understand the impact of various factors on access to finance for policymakers. This study aims to identify the factors for entrepreneurial activities that affect access to finance. To this end, 139 articles (Persian and English) on the factors affecting access to finance for entrepreneurial activities are reviewed using the systematic review of experimental and theoretical literature. Resources are then grouped into two internal and external factors categories. The results showed that the external factors included bank concentration, financial performance, debt conditions (interest rates, leverage and repayment periods), macroeconomic volatility, corruption, and companies' geography and knowledge asymmetry. Additionally, internal factors include entrepreneurial characteristics (age, gender, education, entrepreneurship and network of experience), company characteristics (life span of the company, size of the company, type of company and property, plant and equipment) and financial management practices of the company (financial information, business plan, and capital budgeting and management of working capital). This study's results enable policymakers to have effective strategies to promote access to business finance and enable entrepreneurs to recognize their strengths and limitations in accessing finance.

Today, improving the quality of services provided in the electronic banking system is of particular importance and forms the basis for business development. This research aims to identify and prioritize the components affecting the quality of Internet banking among customers of Kowsar Credit Institution. This study used a mixed-method research design, combining qualitative and quantitative approaches. At first, indicators influencing the quality of banking were obtained through 12 interviews with two classes of faculty members and elites and bank managers. In the second part, to give priority to the extracted indicators, 384 specialized questionnaires were completed by the statistical population, and the necessary data were collected. By applying statistical tests in SPSS software, the data were analyzed, and finally, the indicators were prioritized in terms of importance using the AHP method. The results showed that the indicators of introduction, functions, customer perceptions, physical evidence, and security significantly affect the efficiency of internet banking quality. Based on the values collected, security has the highest rate in Internet banking efficiency and is considered the most important factor. The components of customer perceptions, physical evidence, introduction, and functions situated in the next levels of priority.

Improving project performance represents the efficient use of all organizational resources, particularly information resources and knowledge management. This is an opportunity for information sharing to improve the project team's capacity to learn new knowledge about growth and success in the project. To investigate the impact of information governance on project efficiency, this study aims to define and understand social processes' influence as a variable moderator and information sharing and absorption ability as mediating variables on the relationship between knowledge management and project efficiency Saipa Yadak Company. This is applied research whose method of collecting data is descriptive-survey. The study's statistical population consists of Saipa after-sales company business managers and workers. Data were collected using five standard questionnaires, which were randomly distributed amongst the statistical population. To determine the validity of the questionnaires, formal, material, convergent and divergent methods were used, and Cronbach's alpha coefficient and composite reliability were used to determine the reliability. SPSS and PLS software and the structural equation modeling method were used to analyze data. Findings showed that information governance had a positive and significant impact on project performance and knowledge sharing; besides, it confirmed the positive and significant effect of absorptive capacity on project performance and the moderating role of social processes in the relationship between knowledge sharing and absorption ability. In contrast, its moderating position in the relationship was denied. Effective knowledge management allows for the sharing of knowledge between employees at all levels of the organization. This leads to acquiring relevant and up-to-date information from outside the organization, raising the confidence of workers in the organization and colleagues in enforcing knowledge management, raising the organization's social capital, and thus enhancing the efficiency of the organization's projects.

The main purpose of this study is to investigate the scientific productions of the Sharif University of Technology in the Web of Science and Scopus citation databases. The research data were analyzed using a scientometric approach and by the HistCiteTM and Excel software. The research population consists of scientific products indexed in the Scopus database on June 24, 2018, and in the WebScience database on May 14, 2018, for ten years from 2008 to 2017. The research findings show that the number of researchers' productions in both databases has been increasing. The majority of articles published in the Web of Science database were in the subject areas of electrical and electronic engineering, and those published in the Scopus database were mostly in the field of engineering. With 335 documents and 17,220 citations, Akbar Jafari was the most productive and influential researcher at the Sharif University of Technology. Among the most cited authors, Hesam al-Din Arfa'i, with 4722 citations, was the most influential researcher in the period. Qualitative analysis of articles with Q index showed that 37.32% of the produced articles were published in the first (Q1) and second (Q2) quartiles, which shows the products' quality. Researchers have published more documents in high-impact journals, and publishing articles in high-ranked journals often makes it possible to take more citations. Besides, with the cooperation of 54 countries and 382 organizations, 79 documents will be indexed on the Web of Science under the title of the highest citation works in 40 subject areas. Among these documents, the highest frequency was in the field of physical chemistry with 20 articles. Doing such research can inform the researchers of this university of the current state of scientific production of faculty members. By recognizing the current situation and the shortcomings in this field, they can solve them with the right planning.