Nowadays, the world's scientific community has been publishing an enormous number of papers in different scientific fields. In such environment, it is essential to know which databases are equally efficient and objective for literature searches. It seems that two most extensive databases are Web of Science and Scopus. Besides searching the literature, these two databases used to rank journals in terms of their productivity and the total citations received to indicate the journals impact, prestige or influence. This article attempts to provide a comprehensive comparison of these databases to answer frequent questions which researchers ask, such as: How Web of Science and Scopus are different? In which aspects these two databases are similar? Or, if the researchers are forced to choose one of them, which one should they prefer? For answering these questions, these two databases will be compared based on their qualitative and quantitative characteristics.

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With the rapid development of world and technology, English learning has become more important. Teachers frequently use teacher-centered pedagogy that leads to lack of interaction with students. This paper aims to investigate the advantages and disadvantages of integrating social networking tools into ESL writing classroom and discuss the ways to plan activities by integrating social networking services (SNSs) into the classroom. Data was collected through an online discussion board from TESL students in a state university in Malaysia. The findings revealed that integrating social networking services in ESL writing classroom could help to broaden students’ knowledge, increase their motivation and build confidence in learning ESL writing. The students’ difficulties for concentrating on the materials when they use computer, lack of enough equipment as well as access to internet, and teachers’ insufficient time to interact with the students were regarded as the main disadvantages of integrating social networking tools into ESL writing classes. Therefore, in this new technological era, it is essential for students and teachers to be equipped with technical skills to be competent for life-long learning and teaching. More studies are needed to explore the teachers’ and students’ attitudes towards using ICT in ESL/EFL contexts. Future quantitative and qualitative studies with more participants are needed to provide deeper insight.

Despite the existence of many studies showing positive effects of using Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in the teaching and learning process in general, the use of ICT in teaching writing skills in English as a Second Language (ESL) classrooms is still not very encouraging. This study attempts to seek findings on the use of ICT in the teaching of ESL writing skills in Malaysian secondary schools. This paper just reports one part of the findings obtained from a big project which was conducted in Malaysian secondary schools in five areas of Malaysia. This study focuses solely on the data collected from four English teachers in a secondary school in Kuala Lumpur who were interviewed by the researcher. This study revealed that the use of ICT in the teaching of ESL writing was very low. Advantages of using ICT were reported to be attracting students' attention, facilitating students' learning process, helping to improve students' vocabulary and promoting meaningful learning. Disadvantages found included the difficult class control, distraction and the students' tendency to use short forms in their writing. It was also revealed that teachers are generally weak in managing problems and planning activities involving the use of ICT in the teaching of ESL writing. The results of this study are hoped to provide insights to the Ministry of Education in Malaysia to improve the low use of ICT in teaching ESL writing skills.

Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) play a major role in creating a new and improved model of teaching and learning. A great number of studies have been conducted to examine the advantages of integrating ICT in language education in general and English as a Second Language (ESL) teaching and learning in particular. However, there is a need for more studies on the disadvantages of using ICT in language education. This study aims to identify both advantages and disadvantages of using ICT in teaching ESL reading and writing. To achieve the aim of the study, a total of 23 secondary school English teachers were interviewed. The teachers were pragmatically and purposively selected from three different areas of Malaysia, 7 teachers from Alor Setar, 8 teachers from Tawau and 8 teachers from Johor Bahru, respectively. This study is a qualitative research in nature because a semi-structured interview was used to examine the teachers' perceptions of pros and cons of using ICT in teaching ESL reading and writing. The findings of the study revealed that attracting students' attention, facilitating students' learning process, helping to improve students' vocabulary knowledge and promoting meaningful learning were regarded as the most important advantages of using ICT in teaching ESL reading and writing. Moreover, disadvantages found included the difficulty in classroom control and students' distraction as well as their tendency to use short forms in writing tasks. The findings of the study are hoped to provide the teachers and policymakers with a better and more accurate picture of advantages and disadvantages of using ICT tools in ESL teaching and learning contexts.

Due to the effect of citation impact on The Higher Education (THE) world university ranking system, most of the researchers are looking for some helpful techniques to increase their citation record. This paper by reviewing the relevant articles extracts 33 different ways for increasing the citations possibilities. The results show that the article visibility has tended to receive more download and citations. This is probably the first study to collect over 30 different ways to improve the citation record. Further study is needed to explore and expand these techniques in specific fields of study in order to make the results more precisely.

The number of publications is the first criteria for assessing a researcher output. However, the main measurement for author productivity is the number of citations, and citations are typically related to the paper's visibility. In this paper, the relationship between article visibility and the number of citations is investigated. A case study of two researchers who are using publication marketing tools confirmed that the article visibility will greatly improve the citation impact. Some strategies to make the publications available to a larger audience have been presented at the end of this paper.

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