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On October 18-20, 2009, librarians and publishers fought another round in the ongoing open access (OA) debate, which the Chronicle continues to cover. The opening shot-but it is already a reply-was fired by SPARC, the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition, when it declared October 19-23, 2009 to be "Open Access Week." 1 Open Access is the name of the idea that the public and universities should not pay publishers for something-usually scholarly journals, though now books are on the radar as well-they have already paid to produce. In principle, universities pay professors to write scholarly books and articles, and it pays other professors to review and edit them, but publishers then collect subscriptions to produce these journals and sell them back to the universities. Instead of buying the work back again, goes the argument, journals should be free and distributed online. Proponents, mainly authors and universities, think journals might not survive if libraries have to pay for them twice, once via the university to produce them, the second time to subscribe. This is particularly the case with science journals, which often cost many times more than do humanities journals. While the costs of humanities and social science journals have been increasingly a concern for research libraries, price increases in the sciences have led to a crisis in library subscriptions. This has been a topic of concern now for over two decades and has led to a boycott of science publisher Elsevier in 2003, among others (Albanese 2004). Now that electronic publishing has gained widespread acceptance, both in the academy and in society at large, the time seems at hand for the end of publisher monopolies.

Higher education (HE) in China has been transformed from elite to mass education over the last decade due to commercialisation and funding reform. Many questions have been raised regarding the impact of HE expansion on social justice: what are the implications of the distribution of HE resources on regional inequality? How does it influence different social groups in terms of access to HE? What are the financial implications on different regions and social groups as a result of the funding reform? Based on the official data by region in 1998 and 2006, this paper aims to address these questions and describe how HE has changed over time, both spatially and inter-temporally. Our research results suggest that HE reforms have disadvantaged poor people in impoverished regions despite the availability of HE opportunities for them.

This stimulating and accessible book examines how speed emerged as a cultural issue during industrial modernity. The rise of capitalist society and the shift to urban settings was rapid and tumultuous and was defined by the belief in 'progress'. The first obstacle faced by societies that were starting to 'speed up' was how to regulate and control the process. The attempt to regulate the acceleration of life created a new set of problems, namely the way in which speed escapes regulation and rebels against controls. This pattern of acceleration and control subsequently defined debates about the cultural effects of acceleration. However, in the 21st century 'immediacy', the combination of fast capitalism and the saturation of the everyday by media technologies, has emerged as the core feature of control. This coming of immediacy will inexorably change how we think about and experience media culture, consumption practices, and the core of our cultural and moral values.

Higher education (HE) in China has been transformed from elite to mass education over the last decade due to commercialisation and funding reform. Many questions have been raised regarding the impact of HE expansion on social justice: what are the implications of the distribution of HE resources on regional inequality? How does it influence different social groups in terms of access to HE? What are the financial implications on different regions and social groups as a result of the funding reform? Based on the official data by region in 1998 and 2006, this paper aims to address these questions and describe how HE has changed over time, both spatially and inter-temporally. Our research results suggest that HE reforms have disadvantaged poor people in impoverished regions despite the availability of HE opportunities for them.

Recent years have seen a number of studies on the determinants of educational spending. Almost all of the existing work emphasizes the importance of left-wing governments as a motor of expansion because such expansion allegedly ensures both redistribution and the facilitation of a supply-side economy. The existing literature thereby corroborates the power resource theory. Against this common wisdom the article presents an argument building on the varieties of capitalism approach. It is argued that education is a poor instrument for redistribution because access is universal and high-income groups have a tendency to use education even more than low-income groups. Instead, we argue that deindustrialization is the main driver of educational spending because deindustrialization constitutes one of the most salient threats to workers in modern societies. As deindustrialization rises workers risk ending up with redundant skills, especially in countries where the average skills specificity is high, that is, coordinated market economies. The expectations find empirical support in a time-series cross-section regression analysis of 18 Western countries in the years 1980-2000

"Public-private partnerships in education (ePPP) are acquiring increasing centrality in the agendas of international organizations and development agencies dealing with educational affairs. They are designed as an opportunity to correct inefficiencies in the public delivery of education and to mobilize new resources to increase the access to and cost-effectiveness of education in low-income contexts. This article explores the emergence of ePPP as a 'programmatic idea' and, in particular, the semiotic strategies by means of which this idea has been located in the global education agenda and promoted internationally among practice communities by a network of policy entrepreneurs. The analysis is supported by extensive fieldwork and by a new approach to the analysis of the framing and mobilization of new policy ideas, which incorporates literature on agenda setting, policy entrepreneurs, and policy frame analysis. The approach reveals the complex way in which policy ideas, political actors, institutions, and material factors interact to strategically put forward new policy alternatives in developing contexts."

This 'country study' analyses substantial samples of research papers by Brazilian authors drawn from two global databases. The approach and the findings may each be of interest. Our approach is to examine R&D outputs through bibliometrics (to identify key authors, institutions, journals, etc.) and text mining with taxonomy generation (to identify pervasive research thrusts). We extend prior country studies by providing for interactive data access and exploring military-relevant R&D information. The resulting publication activity profiles provide insight on Brazilian R&D strengths and investment strategies, and help identify opportunities for collaboration. Brazil, a nation of 190 million, evidences a substantial research enterprise, with major capabilities in the life and biomedical sciences, as well as the physical sciences. We benchmark research patterns and trends against several other countries. We find a large measure of international collaboration, particularly with the USA.