Towards a Discourse Move Analysis of Research Article Abstracts in Nepali Journals: A Cross-Disciplinary Study

An abstract is an important component of a research article to attract the readers’ attention and provide a concise, informative, and accurate summary of the paper. Many academic manuscripts are usually rejected due to ineffective abstracts. This study aims to investigate and analyse the discourse moves in research article abstracts in the journals published in Nepal. To achieve this objective, 120 article abstracts from journals of eight different domains were selected, and the contents were analysed using Bitchener’s (2018) framework. The results showed that all the abstracts followed the broad categories of introduction, purpose, methods, products, and conclusion, but there were differences in frequency of occurrence using the parameters specified under each category. The findings of the study showed that discourse moves were frequently used by the majority of journals for writing the context and background, authors' motivations for the research, research gaps, goals of the research, research approach and design, data sources and analysis processes, findings, and contributions of the findings to related fields. Finally, the study concluded that the findings of the study can be significant for designing field-specific academic writing courses that lead the authors to standardize their writing and prevent the article from being rejected.


INTRODUCTION
Among others, abstract is a crucial element in any research paper.It is a concise description of a research paper, which is the last step in the process but written after the title of the paper.It is like an elevator talk wherein an author summarises important information that the paper conveys with an aim of getting the readers interest in the idea thereby enticing them to read the whole paper.It only summarises the contents of the paper rather than providing outside resources, which is usually written in a single paragraph (American Psychological Association [APA], 2020).Alexandra and Hennerice (2006) in defining abstract, state that writing an abstract in a research paper means to extract and summarise Ab (absolute), Str (straight forward), and Act (actual data presentation and interpretation).Thus, abstract does not make any generalisation or exaggeration of the content that is not presented in the research paper.
Abstract presents the researchers' expertise and credibility.It also provides readers what they get from the article and quickly decide if they need to read the whole paper.Abstracts are essential tools for disclosing the findings that scholars do in their research (Tanko, 2017).The readers get first encounter with the article as the abstract speaks the essence of the whole article, persuading readers for reading the whole paper (Hyland, 2009;Pho, 2008;Kaya & Yağız, 2020).The impression created by the abstract on its readers can have a great influence on the fate of the article (Bavdekar & Gogtay, 2015).Therefore, it needs to be academic, standard, formal, and well-developed.Abstracts are crucial to readers to decide whether the research paper meets their requirement and have to consume time in reading it.Effective abstracts include enough information for readers to quickly decide whether the study is pertinent to their research interests.Thus, they are supposed to be clear, specific, accurate, and concise in order to attract the reader's attention.The readers may be put off from adding a paper to their reading list if the abstract is ambiguous or lacking key information.The majority of potential readers believe that the document ends with its abstract (Andrade, 2011;Grif-Alpach, 2017).An effective abstract always attempts to answer the what and how questions of the research in concise form and may open up fresh perspectives for the ongoing discussion of the topic.
Producing a succinct and informative abstract poses a challenge for academic writers seeking to organize their research papers effectively.Following APA (2020), accuracy, non-evaluativeness, coherence, and conciseness are the key characteristics of a research report's abstract.Since it follows precise patterns and the unique discourse flows, many academic writers find it challenging to produce an abstract for a research paper.It always starts with an introduction that gives background information, context, and the author's rationale for doing the study.Then the study's goal, methods, findings, and conclusion are provided.In line with this, Perry et al. (2003) argue that the abstract must start with a brief theme followed by a clearly articulated statement of the major goal or objective of the inquiry in order for readers to comprehend the main subject covered in the report.They also agree that the author needs to describe the study's methodology as well as its practical significance.The major finding(s) should then be succinctly stated.Bitchener (2018) provides five points on the chronological discourse motions, which are introduction, purpose, method, product, and conclusion.Patrick (2014) asserts in the same context that an abstract should include a clear statement of objectives, a succinct explanation of the methodology, a summary of the findings, and the main finding of the study.In an abstract, many publications and books suggest various discourse patterns.Many studies are rejected because they lack traits that demonstrate the worth of the research since the authors may not be aware of the discourse moves specific to the journal in which they declare the contribution of their work (Piqué-Noguera, 2012).Even for seasoned academics, Friginal and Mustafa (2017) note that the various guidelines and requirements set forth by journals and book publishers make it difficult to write good research abstracts.In such situations, it is necessary to carry out research on discourse moves in abstracts of research articles published in the journals of Nepal.
Research papers typically have an informative abstract, which means that they should be jam-packed with all pertinent and important details about the study so that editors, reviewers, and readers can understand its purpose, the suitability of the methodology used, and the study's results.Whatever the types of abstract are, they are written either in unstructured or in structured style.Over the years, abstracts have transitioned from a traditional, unstructured format to one that is structured and useful, where foreign journal editors and article writers are embracing the innovation quickly, only allowing articles with structured abstracts to appear in their publications (Fatiregun & Asuzu, 2003).Unstructured abstracts are written in the paragraph format, where each paragraph is written as a separate paragraph without the beginning line being indented.Structured abstracts, in contrast, include labels to help readers identify between sections like the objectives, methods, findings, and conclusion (APA, 2020).This indicates that structure of the abstract depends on the nature of the journal and the institutional guidelines.
Different journals apply different discourse moves in writing abstracts.For instance, Suntara and Usaha (2013) found that the most common patterns in linguistic journals were purpose, methods, products, conclusion, introduction, purpose, methods, and product.In addition, they found that the most frequent patterns in applied linguistic journals were purpose, methods, products, and conclusion; introduction, purpose methods, product, and conclusion, and introduction, purpose methods, product.Similarly, Kaya and Yağız (2020) investigated that Turkish authors typically used three moves (purpose, method, and product), whereas foreign authors more frequently used four moves (purpose, method, product, and conclusion).In a comparison between research abstracts and introductions in two languages, Arabic and English, Alotaibi (2013) unearthed that purpose, method, and product were found to be the most frequent moves in all texts, while introduction and conclusion moves occur more frequently in English abstracts.Likewise, in their analysis of English and Persian abstracts, Behnam and Golpour (2014) noticed that linguistic abstracts follow the conventional structure while mathematics abstracts show variations in both languages.Noorihzadeh-Honami and Chalak (2018) concluded that the use of introduction and discussion moves was relatively higher in Persian abstracts than in English abstracts.Similar to this, Amnuai (2019) also investigated that the frequency of introduction and conclusion moves were relatively high in the international data while analysing international and Thai-based abstracts employing Hyland's model.As an educator, researcher, editor, and reviewer in different national and international journals, I have realised that an academic writer needs to be familiar with the basic discourse moves in each component of a research paper in order to make his or her article well-organised, systematic, and meaningful.My experiences of having my article rejected from many of the internationally ranked journals encouraged me to be aware of each micro-movement in a paper to make it publishable in a standard journal.I have seen, read, and observed many journals in diverse fields and subjects published in Nepal, but no research has been carried out analysing their structure, language, style, discourse moves, and so on.To address this issue, this research is an attempt to analyse the discourse moves in the abstracts of research articles published in the journals of Nepal by using Bitchener's (2018) five points model, which will be significantly different from reviewed literature in terms of its context, objectives, and methodology.

RESEARCH METHODS
The research design used in this study was content analysis as a part of quantitative research.The content analysis method uses a variety of analytical tools to produce findings and place them in context (White & Marsh, 2006).It can be applied in qualitative, quantitative and mixed methods research frameworks.In this research, while analysing discourse moves in abstracts of research articles published in the journal of Nepal, I used content analysis because it quantifies the qualitative information by methodically grouping, comparing, and contrasting different pieces of information in order to scrutinise them (GAO Learning Centre, 2013;White & Marsh, 2006).Abstracts written in the journal articles were the contents in this study, where the discourse moves of them were analysed.
The data for this study was collected from 135 research article abstracts from 27 journals indexed in NepJOL.The journals were selected purposively and the article abstracts were randomly selected from the articles in each journal.Five journals from each selected field published in the year 2017-2023 were purposively selected.Similarly, five research article abstracts from each journal were randomly selected.All the 135 research articles with IMRAD (introduction, methodology, results and discussion) format were selected and only informative abstracts were analysed from the journals.The detail portfolio of the area, journal and article abstracts are presented in Table 1.The collected research article abstracts were observed critically and analyzed using Bitchener's (2018) five points chronological discourse move framework, which includes introduction, purpose, method, product, and conclusion.I have used this framework believing that it is recent and comprehensive.The parameters and the frameworks used in the analysis of the data are presented in Table 2.  (Bitchener, 2018, p. 51) While analyzing the research article abstracts, all these components were meticulously observed and analyzed.

RESULTS
The results present the overall discourse moves in research article abstracts first and then present journal-wise discourse moves in research article abstracts.Table 3 presents the overall discourse moves in research article abstracts following broad categories, and the succeeding sections present the journal-wise and specific analysis of the research article abstracts, following Bitchener's (2018) framework given in Table 2.  3 shows that all the research article abstracts in all the selected journals had an introduction, purpose, and product, while only 98 (81.33%) of them had methods written and 70 (58.33%)mentioned a conclusion.From the observation of the discourse moves in the article abstracts, it was found that the organisation of discourse moves was not consistent in those journal article abstracts.Some of them included purpose first and then context, and vice versa; and some of them explicitly presented methodology while others did not.Similarly, very few of them (i.e., 58.33%) included a conclusion.

Journals of English Language Teaching (ELT) and English Literature
The journals that cover the range of article titles on English language teaching and learning, teaching methodologies, ELT curriculum development, assessment and examination, classroom management, language and technology integration, and practical teaching and learning were taken as ELT journals.The journals that embody the range of topics on literary genres, literary theory, literary criticism, cultural studies, comparative literature, and interdisciplinary approaches to literature are journals of literature.Table 4 presents the discourse moves in research article abstracts in ELT and English literature journals published in Nepal.4 shows that almost all the ELT journals' research article abstracts incorporated all the components specified in each component of an abstract mentioned by Bitchener (2018) in Table 2.However, only 10 abstracts (66.66%) out of 15 included the authors' motivation for research and explained the importance and core of the research focus.Table 4 further reveals that only very few English literature journal research article abstracts included all the components and specified parameters for each component.All the abstracts contained the background, context, purpose, and result of the study.But only 86.66% of the abstracts included data sources, and 60% of them recommended further research.However, in other English literature journals, research article abstracts covered less than 40% of the specified parameters under each component presented in Table 2.

Journals of Science and Technology, and Medicine
The journals of science and technology comprise of research articles from the domain of physics, chemistry, biology, zoology, environment science, material science, information technology, and computer science.Similarly, the journals that encompass a range of articles from medical fields like medicine, pediatrics, surgery, cardiology, neurology, dermatology, and psychiatry are journals of medicine.Table 5 presents the discourse moves in research article abstracts of science and technology, and medicine journals.5 exhibits that all the abstracts in the journals of medicine unveil all the parameters specified under each component except two special features in conclusion.However, only 40% of the abstracts identified the limitations of the study and only 46.66 % of them recommended areas for further research.
In regard to the discourse moves in the article abstracts of journals of science and technology, the results in Table 5 reveals that almost all the abstracts (i.e.100%) admitted aims and results of the study and suggested the significance of findings.Only less than 50% of the article abstracts incorporated the importance and significance of the study (i.e.33.33%), research gap (i.e.46.66%), aspects for specifying the objective (i.e.46.66%), research design (i.e.40%), and limitations of the study (i.e.26.66%).More than 90% of the abstracts presented the context and background of the study (i.e.93.33%) while only 86.66% of them identified data sources, 73.33% presented the data analysis process and 66.66% of them made the recommendations for further research.

Journals of Management and Social Sciences
The journals that publish the articles in the fields of management are the journals of management.They cover a wide range of topics from the domains of marketing, finance, accounting, entrepreneurship, operation management, and business.Likewise, the journals of social sciences in this study were those journals that published the articles on the topics of the fields like sociology, economics, political science, communication studies, social, geography, psychology, and anthropology.Table 6 presents the discourse moves in the research article abstracts in the journals of management and social sciences.6 exhibits that all the article abstracts (i.e.100%) in the journals of management had background and context of the study, research gaps, objectives of the study, data sources, data analysis process, and the results of the study.Further, the results showed that 90% of the abstracts incorporated centrality of the research focused and 93.33% included the importance of findings of the research.Similarly, only 86.66 % of the abstracts embodied methodological approaches and limitations of the study and 73.33% of them entailed authors' motivation for the research and recommended the areas for further research.The results further reveal that only 66.66% of the abstracts had specified objective aspects and 60% of them covered limitations of the study.
In the case of the discourse moves in the article abstracts in the journals of social sciences, the results in Table 6 presents that all (i.e.100%) article abstracts contained the aim and major findings of the study.However, only a very few article abstracts subsumed author's motivation for the study (13.33%), significance and centrality of the research (20%), gaps of the study (33.33%), limitations of the study (46.66%), and only 33.33% of them recommended areas for further research.The results further unveil that 80% of the abstracts in social sciences comprised methodological approaches and research designs.Moreover, 88.66 % of them involved data analysis process and major findings while 93.33% of them constituted data sources.

Journals of Law and Engineering
The journals of law are those that publish the articles on the constitutional law, criminal law, international law, human rights, administrative law, and so on.In contrast, the journals of engineering focus on research, advancement, and discussion in the field of engineering and covers the article topics from a wide range of engineering like civil engineering, mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, computer engineering, and so on.The discourse moves in the research article abstracts in the journals of law and engineering is shown in Table 7.  7 reveals that almost all the journals of law (i.e.100%) research article abstracts incorporated background and context, aims, data sources and findings of the study.Less than half of the article abstracts in this domain included the knowledge gap (i.e.33.33%), research design (i.e.46.66%), limitations of the study (i.e.20%) and recommendations for further study (20%).Similarly, 66.66% of the abstracts comprised researchers' motivation for research, 60% of them got significance and focus of the research, 86.66% specified the aspects of the objectives, and 73.33% identified and justified research approaches and methods, and data analysis processes.Likewise, 93.33% of them suggested the value of the research findings to the field investigated.
As for the discourse moves in the research article abstracts of the journals of engineering, the results in Table 7 presented that all the selected article abstracts (i.e.100%) in the domain contained background and context, objectives, sources of data, and product of the study.Similarly, 66.66 of the abstracts explained researchers' motivation for the research, 80% of them mentioned the valued of the research focused, and 66% identified the research gap, aspects of the objectives and research design.Moreover, the results showed that 53.33% of them included data analysis processes, 80% suggested importance of the research findings, 53% presented limitations of the study, and 46.66% mentioned recommendations for further research.

DISCUSSION
This study investigated the discourse moves in the research article abstracts published in the journals of Nepal, analysing their contents using the discourse move framework suggested by Bitchener (2018).The overall results obtained from content analysis of the article abstracts showed that all the article abstracts in the journals of all the selected fields covered the five-point discourse moves, but their frequency of occurrence was different.The most frequent discourse moves were introduction, purpose, and product, and the least frequent discourse move was conclusion.The findings of the study demonstrate that all the article abstracts in the journals of selected fields incorporated the discourse move framework suggested by Bitchener (2018), though their rate and ratio of frequency vary.The findings corroborate the studies that showed that introduction was the most frequent move in the article abstracts as compared to other moves (Amnuai 2019;Behna & Zamanian, 2013) and contrast with the findings that introduction was the least frequent discourse in the abstracts of English journal articles (Saeew, 2014;Noorihzadeh-Honami & Chalak, 2018).The analysis of research article abstracts from Nepali journals using Bitchener's (2018) discourse move framework revealed consistent incorporation of all five discourse moves, with varying frequencies, emphasizing the prominence of introduction, purpose, and product moves while highlighting a departure from findings in abstracts of English journal articles.
In the case of the discourse moves of specific parameters in each component, the research article abstracts in ELT journals, context and background of the study, and research gap had the highest frequency, and researcher's motivation and research focus were less frequent under introduction.Similarly, all the parameters under purpose, methods, and product, and suggesting important findings under conclusion, were the most frequent discourse moves, while identifying limitations of the study was the least frequent.Similar to ELT journal article abstracts, the journal article abstracts of literature had context and background; in addition, the aims of the study under the introduction and the product of the research were the most frequent discourse moves, while explanation of the significance of the research focus, identifying knowledge gaps, research design, and identifying limitations of the study were the least frequent discourse moves.The discourse moves in the article abstracts of the ELT journal were more specific in maintaining discourse moves than the article abstracts of the journal of literature, comparing them to Bitchener's (2018) framework.This might be due to the disciplinary factors or the journals' abstract writing guidelines.The context and background, purposes, and products were highly frequent moves in both types of article abstracts, which aligns with Darabad's (2016) study on abstracts in the articles of applied linguistics, applied mathematics, and applied chemistry that found the highest frequency of purpose and products.
In the article abstracts in the journals of medicine, all the discourse moves as suggested by Bitchener (2018) were found to be strictly followed; however, the identifying research limitations and recommendations for further research were less frequent in comparison to other discourse moves.Similarly, in the article abstracts in the journals of science and technology, the most frequent discourse moves were purpose, product, and significance of findings, and the least frequent discourse moves were identifying limitations of the research, research design, and research focus.Many of the parameters under the introduction, methods, and conclusion sections are less frequent.The finding corroborates the claim that introduction, methods, and conclusion moves in non-native English writers' abstracts are less focused and specified than those of native English writers (Alotaibi, 2016;Amnuani, 2019;Kafes, 2012).Most of the article abstracts in the journals of medicine were written in the structured form, thus, the authors were obliged to mention all the parameters under each component specified.
The article abstracts in the journals of social sciences had aims and product moves that were more frequent, while research's motivation for the research, research focus, knowledge gap, limitations of the study, and recommendations for further research were less frequent discourse moves.But in the article abstracts in the journals of management, context and background, specification of the knowledge gap, aims of the study, data sources, and data analysis processes were the most frequent, while limitations of the study and recommendations for further research were less frequent.The findings indicate that Bitchener's (2018) discourse moves in the article abstracts were more specifically followed in the research article abstracts in the journals of management than the journals of social sciences.The results showed that the most frequent discourse moves in the article abstracts in the journals of law were background and context, aims, data sources, and products of the study, while establishing and justifying knowledge gaps, specifying key research design, identifying limitations of the study, and making recommendations for further research were the less frequent moves.Similarly, context and background, aims, data sources, and data analysis processes of the study were the most frequent, while identifying limitations of the study and recommendations for further research were less frequent moves in the article abstracts in the journal of engineering.
All these findings reveal that context and background, aims, product, and significance of the findings to the field (contributions) were the most frequent specific parameters in the article abstracts in all the journals.Similar to this, the studies showed that purpose, methods, and products were more frequent discourse moves in the abstracts of research articles (Amnui, 2019;Saidi & Talebi, 2021).Similar to this, Kaya and Yağız (2020) also found that purpose, methods, and products were more frequent in Turkish writers' article abstracts, while four moves (purpose, methods, product, and conclusion) were more frequent in the foreign writers' article abstracts.However, most of them failed to incorporate specific discourse moves into each component.The pattern in which they presented the abstracts was also different; that is, some of them first presented purpose and then context and background, while others first presented context and background and then objectives.However, the most preferred discourse moves in most of the abstracts in the articles in the journals of each selected domain were context and background, authors' motivation for the research, research gap, aims of the research, research approach and design, data sources and analysis processes, findings, and contribution of the findings to related fields, identifying limitations of the study, and suggesting areas for further research.

CONCLUSION AND IMPLICATIONS
This study aimed to investigate and analyse the discourse moves in the research article abstracts published in journals in Nepal and indexed in NepJOL as a part of content analysis using Bitchener's (2018) discourse moves framework of an abstract.The findings indicated that abstracts in the journal articles published in Nepal broadly followed a five-step framework that incorporated introduction, purpose, methods, products, and conclusion.However, the presentation of specific parameters in each component varies in those selected journals.The journals of medicine mostly followed both broad and specific moves followed by ELT journals rather than the abstracts of other journals' articles.The lack of proper inclusion of each parameter in each component may be attributed to a lack of organisational knowledge and practise or to the flexibility in the author's guidelines for writing an abstract in a research article.An abstract need to be written with considerable care and attention by an academic writer because a poorly written abstract with insufficient data or supporting conclusions is unlikely to offend readers' interest in the research.However, despite the difficulties in maintaining the proper discourse in the article abstracts, the researchers or authors still participated in writing and publishing articles for their individual professional development and institutional advancement.The authors in each domain need proper training and workshops to enhance their academic writing abilities and make them able to maintain all the moves in each component of a research paper, either by the journal managing teams or by the institutions or any other agencies or organisations.The findings of this study support the authors need to be familiar with the basic convention of writing an abstract in a research article.Moreover, it may be useful for researchers and scholars to produce the academic writing manuals or courses that instruct overall academic writing processes and parameters to be maintained in the abstracts of articles in the journals of the domain.With the results of this study, the writers who have published their research articles in the national journals will be aware, encouraged, and motivated to write standard articles maintaining all the discourse moves and publish them in the international indexed journals.
Despite the fact that this study has opened a new avenue for researchers and writers to maintain a proper discourse in the research article abstracts, it has several limitations in its context, scope, and methodology.The study included only 120 journal article abstracts from eight different domains, which may not be a sufficient sample size to make an overall generalisation about the convention of writing abstracts in the research articles in the respective domains.Thus, future studies could be done by increasing the number of abstracts and domains and making a comparative study among them.Additionally, a comparative analysis of the discourse moves in the abstracts between the journals published in Nepal and at the international level could help the authors or researchers become familiar with the international trends and bring standardisation to their writings.Such studies can be crucial for making generalisations about the world trend of writing abstracts in a research article and making decisions about bringing out the field-specific courses or manuals in academic writing.Moreover, this study used only content analysis methods, opening up areas for other research methods to explore in-depth knowledge of the same phenomenon.Future studies could employ multiple tools, more article abstracts, and the perspectives of the authors on the same phenomenon.From the research findings, it is recommended that schools and universities prioritise the teaching of academic writing courses to train practitioners in the way of standard academic writing convention.Furthermore, the academic writers should receive training on academic writing or research writing from different agencies on different perspectives and practises.Urbanization leads the conversion of green area to built-up area which eventually leads to increase in surface temperature and creates the urban heat islands.Kathmandu Valley (KV), one of the growing mega cities in South Asia in-terms of population density and urbanization, requires the monitoring of urban morphology for the proper assessment.Use of satellite images makes the work easier.The present study focuses on the evaluation of Land Surface Temperature (LST) as a preliminary work of monitoring urban and periurban areas of Kathmandu Valley.We used Landsat-8 satellite images as an input to evaluate LST over different administrative units for the study period 2013-2019.The results of research showed that Kathmandu, Bhaktapur and Lalitpur administrative units have higher average LST (ranging from 22.1 to 36.9°C in the month of March and June respectively) comparing to other administrative units.The average LST was found to be higher in the month of June.The temporal results of LST portrays 2015 as the hottest year during the study period.Also, spatial and temporal evaluation of LST in KV suggests to increase the greener space in the urban areas to minimize surface temperature.Finally, the authors of current research recommends using the concept of remote sensing (satellite image analysis) as an alternative tool for monitoring urban morphology.

Nepal Journal of Medical Sciences
Knowledge, Attitude and Practice of Cervical Cancer Screening Among the Healthcare Workers of Western Region, Nepal ABSTRACT Introduction: Cancer cervix being the only preventable cancer in the world is still the leading cause of cancer-related death in developing countries.Awareness and screening programs are a must for health care workers whose direct impact goes on society.Healthy people are found to be given services, but their health is often neglected.This study highlights health care worker's knowledge, attitude and practices on cervical cancer screening.
Purpose: This study aims to assess healthcare worker's knowledge, attitude and practice toward cervical cancer screening in the western region of Nepal.Methods: A semi-structured questionnaire was distributed to health care workers from September 2020 to March 2021 eligible to participate in the study were included.A total of 115 participants were enrolled in the study.A descriptive measure for sociodemographic data was done.Determinants of knowledge and practice for screening were determined using the Chi-square test.

Results:
The mean age of the participant was 27.92±5.49(SD).More than half had poor knowledge (51%), followed by moderate knowledge (37%) and less than one eight had good knowledge (12%).92 % know that cervical cancer is preventable but very less have undergone screening test.

Conclusion:
There is an urgent need for educational intervention to change their attitude towards HPV vaccination and encourage cervical cancer screening program that helps in the prevention of cervical cancer.HPV vaccination should be kept in the immunization schedule and made easily available at a low cost.

Journal of Political Science Measuring Governance in Nepal Abstract
The study aimed to explore the approaches, tools, and indicators around the world to measure governance and how Nepal is taking advantage of them.Measuring governance is a complex phenomenon because it depends on the context in which it is being discussed.Based on the secondary information, the study discussed the introduction of governance, its importance, prevailing approaches, and indicators of measuring governance globally and their uses in Nepal.The article acknowledges that periodic assessment of governance indicators urges countries to continuously strive for better service delivery for further improvements on these governance indicators.Nevertheless, the most widely used governance indicators by developing countries such as Nepal is developed mostly by international organizations and multi-laterals and with their strategic interest limiting their universality.Thus, such indicators may require critical evaluation and customization by developing countries before adoption.The research concludes that there is no single best universally accepted method and indicator for measuring governance.

Kathmandu School of Law Review Paradigm Shifts in Internalization of International Law: A Case Study of Growing Human Rights Jurisprudence in Nepal Abstract
The concept of internalization (domestication) of international law, underpinning the traditional theories of 'monism and dualism,' is being shifted along with the change in the contexts.Internalization can be mapped out through the process and result indicators of recognition of international legal norms through incorporation or transformation in the domestic laws, including the Constitution.The success of the internalization of international human rights law depends on the political will of the government and independent judiciary.The state practices, including decisions of the courts, discussed in this paper, further indicate the eventual changes in the process.Most importantly, the level of internalization can be measured by jurisprudential trends of application of international law in general and the international human rights instruments in particular.The second part of this paper minutely observes the 'bramble-bush effects' on the laws and jurisprudence developed along with democratization in Nepal since 1990.
Nepal is an interesting case study due to its experiment of the theories of monism and dualism.Although the Treaty Act of Nepal explicitly recognizes the higher legal status of international agreements or treaties to which Nepal is a party, the Constitution of Nepal does not recognize the same.Nevertheless, the situation of ratification and accession of a large number of human rights treaties without reservation and growing thematic human rights jurisprudence reasonably justify the greater scope of internalization of international human rights laws in Nepal.

Journal of NELTA Gandaki (JoNG)
Linguistic Hybridity: The Use of Code Mixing in Nepali Folk Pop Songs Abstract Code mixing of two or more languages has become a common phenomenon in Nepali folk pop songs.In this context, this study discussed the phenomenon of mixing multilingual terms in Nepali folk pop songs and the reasons for mixing such codes from other languages.This qualitative phenomenological study along with situation analysis used documents and unstructured interviews as the data collection tools.I selected 12 Nepali folk pop songs purposively for analysis.They include Baduliko Khutko ("Sound of a Hiccup"), Champa ("Champa girl"), "Hello Hello", Meri Chhoretti ("My Girl Friend"), Mudda Haldincchu ("File a Case") and Rato Rato Khursani Piro Chha ("Red, Red Pepper Hot"), Chorut Salkauane ("Light a Cigarette"),"Cocacola Figure " and DJ Bajako ("Playing DJ"), Daru Sadkaune ("Gulping Local Wine") and Hi Kali ("Hello Beauty"), and Tension Naleu Yaar ("Don't be in Tension, Friend").These songs were played in the audio laboratory to identify the multilingual terms used by the Nepali composers and musicians in Nepali folk pop songs and analyzed in terms of the phenomenon of code mixing.Two language teachers and one folk pop singer were interviewed to explore the reasons for code mixing.The result shows that the young generation is mostly attracted towards the folk pop songs with code mixing, and such songs become popular among the youths due to their multilingual flavour.Nepali folk songs have been influenced by the postmodernist tradition, fashion and technological influence.The trend of code mixing in Nepali folk pop songs may lose the linguistic purity thereby resulting linguistic hybridity.

The Outlook: Journal of English Studies
Pursuit of Moksha through Existential Anxiety and Karma in Ghanashyam Khadka's Nirvana Abstract The idea of struggle for existence is always the turning point for the search for ultimate reality.Reality leads to realization.Moksha is the point of ultimate realization.Based on the theme of Moksha, the novel Nirvana by Ghanashyam Khadka proposes a new mode of defining and exemplifying the process of Moksha.This study explores how the transitoriness in life and the realization of meaninglessness in life have conditioned us to accept every dimension of Dukha, which ultimately leads us to enlightenment and Nirvana.Grounded on the principles of existential anxiety and the search for Moksha through Gita philosophy, this study examines how the queries on the truth of life and death lead to the realization of the value of death in life.These queries are meant for existence and they properly lead to the level of Moksha.Before knowing the truth of human limitation to the knowledge of worldly existence and life, human beings are disturbed by the destined events of life, but these events become the sources of the perfect knowledge to enable one to be free from all worldly sorrows and pains.The novel, Nirvana, shows the central characters, Monika and the narrator, undergoing long troubles of life individually, have realized ultimate peace when they have followed Buddhist meditation in search of Nirvana, but throughout their life, they are guided by the Gita theory of Karma and essence.
Resource Information System (HRIS) could be instrumental in gaining competitive advantage to organizations across all sectors.However, the adoption of HRIS is scanty in many organizations, especially in the developing countries.This study attempted to investigate application of Unified Technology Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) model in the context of adoption of Human Resource Information System (HRIS) in Nepali organizations.It also examined the mediating role of Behavioral Intention for actual use of HRIS.The study further investigated the moderating role of prior exposure for generating actual use of HRIS when behavioral intention already existed.One hundred thirty employees from the Human Resource Unit of different organizations participated in the study.The results showed that three factors -facilitating condition, performance expectancy, and hedonic motivation, generate behavioral intention for adoption of HRIS.The influence of these factors on actual use of HRIS was partially mediated by behavioral intention for adoption.Prior exposure of employees moderated the positive influence of three factors on actual use of HRIS.The implications of the study are discussed and limitations of the study are highlighted.

Table 1
Journals and the Number of Article Abstracts Selected

Table 3
Overall Discourse Moves in Research Article Abstracts

Table 4
Discourse Moves in Research Article Abstracts in ELT and English Literature Journals

Table 5
Discourse Moves in Research Article Abstracts in Science and Technology and Medicine journals

Table 6
Discourse Moves in Research Article Abstracts in Journals of Management and Social

Table 7
Discourse Moves in the Research Article Abstracts in Journals of Law and Engineering

Geospatial mapping of COVID-19 cases, risk and agriculture hotspots in decision- making of lockdown relaxation in Nepal Abstract:
The study has explored the risk scenario via geospatial mapping of temporal transmission trend of COVID-19 in 77 districts of Nepal focusing on the district-wise risk analyses based on present active cases, population density and land entry points from neighboring countries.In overall, low to very high risk zones have been identified.Jhapa, Morang and Sunsari districts of Province 1; Dhanusa, Mahottari, Sarlahi, Rautahat, Bara and Parsa districts of Province 2; Kathmandu district of Bagmati Province, Nawalparasi West, Rupandehi, Kapilbastu and Banke districts of Province 5, as well as Kailali of Sudurpanchim Province are identified to have very high risk for COVID-19 spread.The rapid growth in the number of cases has made many districts remarkably susceptible to the infection.The vulnerability analysis has been then followed by identification of agriculture hotspots across the country in terms of major crops.42 districts with moderate to high crop productivities have been recognized as being not in very high risk zones where the government should allow farmers to do their agriculture activities with well-maintained social distance and other safety precautions.The results when combined would suggest an urgent decision by the Government for gradual lockdown relaxation for agro-economic reinstatement what is commonly called the latent comparative advantage for Nepalese economy after tourism.