This issue of "Research Library Issues" ("RLI") presents an introduction article and two companion articles, which highlight Net Neutrality. The introduction article, "Why Net Neutrality Matters and What Research Libraries Can Do about It" (Mary Lee Kennedy), explains that the fundamental intent of the open internet…

In the context of open-access (OA) academic publishing, the mounting pressure cross global academe to publish or perish has spawned an exponentially growing number of dodgy academic e-journals charging high fees to authors, often US$300-650, and even triple that amount, promising super-fast processing and publication open-access (OA) online.…

Freedom of any kind has intrinsic value, and education freedom is controversial, in need of empirical assessment of possible and likely trade-offs between freedom from state control and social goals such as equity and cohesion. Without a reasonable empirical measure of education freedom we can only cite the controversies and choose sides. The…

Teaching communication policy to young college students can be a challenge. Students often consider law and policy as difficult, abstract, or even unrelated to their lives. Yet experienced teachers note that students--especially those who are first exposed to regulatory concepts--benefit when they actively participate, engage, and deliberate for…

For many years, debates over telecommunications network policy were marked by a relative lack of partisan and ideological conflict. In the last decade, this has changed markedly. Today, debates over a whole set of issues, including broadband competition, net neutrality, copyright, privacy, and others, have become more contentious. These…

A decade ago, before the tech boom collapsed and the digital economy bubble burst, it seemed to some that issues surrounding information technology (IT) might be central to the politics of the early 21st century. But after September 11, 2001, with so much else on everyone's minds, "digital politics" seemed a boring sideshow. Technocrats,…

Rich Greenfield examines the basics of today's net neutrality debate that is likely to be an ongoing issue for society. Greenfield states the problems inherent in the definition of "net neutrality" used by Common Cause: "Network neutrality is the principle that Internet users should be able to access any web content they choose and…

This document presents witness testimony and supplemental materials from a Congressional hearing regarding reform to national telecommunications policy, namely, replacing a regime of heavy regulation with a true market system. Statements are featured by Senators John Ashcroft, Conrad Burns, Ernest Hollings, Kay Baily Hutchison, John D. Rockefeller…

The article reports results from a research facilitated learning project carried out in an engineering department in an oil and gas company. The objective of the project was to enhance an awareness of and the ability to use, dialogue and reflection-based learning approaches. The results document that the project-based engineering setting induces…

The authors examine some of the conceptions around the information age they refer to as 6-D vision: demassification, decentralization, denationalization, despacialization, disintermediation and disaggregation. These conceptions tend to oversimplify the forces that are at work in society by discounting any influences outside of information and…

Questions about the high prices of scholarly journals have grown in importance over the past several years, but they have assumed new urgency given the extremely tight budgets facing most universities today. In this article, the authors discuss the alarming increases in the cost of scholarly journals and the emergence of a concentration of…

The controversies in adoption have extended across a spectrum of policy and practice issues, and although the issues have become clear, resolution has not been achieved nor has consensus developed regarding a framework on which to improve the quality of adoption policy and practice. This book is the fourth in a series to use an ethics-based…

To protect their copyrights, electronic publishers and document delivery providers track usage and personal information which threatens library users' privacy and rights to intellectual freedom and access to information. Suggests using data encryption software as a solution. Recommends librarians advocate a competitive marketplace by working for…

This report by the Blue Ribbon Task Force on Wisconsin's Telecommunications Infrastructure considers infrastructure to be the common network that connects individual residences, businesses, and agencies, rather than the individual systems and equipment themselves. The task force recognizes that advances in telecommunications technologies and…

This article addresses concerns about the role of education policy in the context of knowledge-related public policy. Specifically, it raises concerns about how the technocratic and anti-social tendencies already observed in knowledge-related policy discourse may adversely influence the intellectual and cultural life of communities. A key goal of…