Why are the rankings of universities not changing? Why is the demographic composition of top universities the same? In this review, these questions are addressed based on physics. Although size matters, higher ranks do not correlate with bigger sizes. The higher ranks belong to universities that have more authors who receive more citations. Citations are a record of how ideas spread from the source to the whole globe, in accordance with the physics of the logistics S-curve phenomenon. The spreading occurs in three periods – slow, fast, slow – and the population served by each idea during its lifetime depends on the size of the first big channel that carries the idea. An idea from a famous university has a larger spreading territory around it than an idea from a lesser-known university. Creativity is key: rankings come from visibility through citations, and, in turn, visibility for an author is aided by the higher visibility of the university. The demographic composition of the top universities is the same: for instance, the percentage of female authors and authors of East Asian origin among the 200 most cited authors does not vary significantly over the 20 highest ranked universities.

This article deals with the age-old problem of the literary canon, from a perspective that tries to supersede the still dominating questions of nation building or mainstream versus minorities culture. Taking stock from the observation that recent debates have moved the question to the field of the creative industries as well as that of cultural policy, it asks instead questions on the actual use and use-value of the canon, which is here reframed from the point of view of both writers and policy makers.

Female artists and performers are at the top of the scale of precarious work relations in post-Fordist society. Their work is undervalued and seldom paid. This article deals with the issues arising from the controversial relations between the cultural, social and economic value of their work. How to re-valorize artistic work performed by women? In providing the answer to this central question, the value of artworks will be defined in terms of Bourdieu’s concept of symbolic capital and in the context of Marx’s theory of commodity fetishism. The article argues that a contemporary alternative can be sought in the new chain of value accumulation, in which the surplus-value of the artwork is created by shifting its symbolic value into a direct relationship to the material resources. This point will be illustrated with the art projects presented at City of Women, an international festival of contemporary arts based in Ljubljana, Slovenia.

This study aims to analyse the policies with respect to, and structuring of, science and technology in Turkey from a historical perspective, and to evaluate the restructuring currently going on, from the viewpoint of institutions on science and technology. Such restructuring has undergone many transformations throughout Turkish history, and has been influenced directly by both internal and external dynamics. From the examples of other countries, we learn that success in high technology production results from well-established and sound industrial and scientific infrastructures. It would be useful to set forth such a vision for Turkey as well.

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries a specific type of games took place in the Roman Academy of Arcadia. These games were a major cultural event in the academy and were a type of poetry competition which, in many aspects, was similar to the ancient Olympic Games. Therefore, they are a perfect example of the heritage of the Olympic spirit of the given era.

The reforms of the Polish system of science emphasise the importance of research and the international activity of Polish scientists. Optimal allocation of funds, taking into account the needs of researchers, is one of the current key objectives of research policy in Poland. The aim of this article is to discover values that Polish researchers identify with as well as defining their approach to the current system of research financing in Poland. The results presented here come from a nationwide study implemented at the turn of 2016. In total, we surveyed 800 randomly selected researchers. The interviewees had at least a PhD degree and were employed in Polish research institutions. The results of the study confirm that the researchers who identify with different ethoses of science have varied approaches to the Polish system of research financing. The scientists who take the least favourable view of the system are those who identify with the academic tradition. Compared with the scientists with deeply-rooted academic values, those in favour of a post-academic ethos more appreciate the available funding opportunities as well as the features of competition-based research funding. They also more often claim that the rules of financing research institutions in Poland have a positive impact on the development of science.

Research Infrastructures (RIs) are tools for scientific research that have received increased attention in science policy in Europe in recent years, including the launch of specific governance bodies and a structured process of prioritization and organization of RI projects in the making. But there is no commonly accepted definition of what RIs are, and the category is both very varied and lacks historical roots. This article provides a historical contextualization of this policy area and discusses, in some detail, different ways of categorizing the 60 RIs identified by EU-level governance bodies as strategically important for Europe as a whole. Showing that the concept of RIs is a political construct with little analytical value for assessing the role and function of RIs in science and innovation systems, the article paves the way for more conceptually and analytically stringent studies of the politics of RIs in Europe.

It is well known that academic research which includes human participants undergoes an ethical review which, in many countries today, includes all academic disciplines and not only medical science. But what about those disciplines with the least experience of ethical codes for research, such as the visual and performing arts? How are they defined and positioned in ethical codes and guidelines that are intended to apply to all disciplines? What are the challenges to ethical frameworks which aim to be inclusive of the visual and performing arts? This article examines the European Commission-funded SATORI project (Stakeholders Acting Together On the ethical impact assessment of Research and Innovation) in its aim to produce the first comprehensive, international standard for the ethical assessment of research in all fields including the arts.

Oxford currently finds itself in the process of an upheaval, provoked by the need to respond to the inroads made by globalising forces, which require all British universities to take on some of the characteristics of business organisations. Its distinguished academic reputation can no longer be entrusted to word of mouth, but instead the university must compete with other similar institutions through advertising and an energetic policy of rebranding. The principal communicative genre involved in this rebranding is the website, and this article explores the semiotic construction of webpages relating to Oxford’s ‘international mission’ in which, it is suggested, a covert attempt to attract foreign students is presented in the guise of a text whose ostensible purpose is to provide information.

Based on two studies carried out in the school years 2003/2004 and 2016/2017, this article looks into what knowledge and research experience young Poles have concerning education and the social participation of Polish youngsters. Referring to Robert Havighurst’s concept of developmental tasks and Jerzy Modrzewski’s concept of social participation, the author of the current paper shows Polish youth to be deficient in knowledge of how to fulfil life’s tasks and participate in society, and of the duties of education in the field of shaping and activating social and public engagement. These deficiencies show that the Polish school system is dominated by education detached from practice and that learners are not prepared for undertaking adult social roles through active participation in public life. This lack results from a process of legitimizing, which ensures ‘the loyalty of the masses’ and perpetuates existing cultural patterns without co-participation in social or public life. The ensuing analysis provides educators with knowledge of the developmental needs of Polish youth, makes the numerous determinants of developmental tasks more transparent, and allows for specifying the results of socialization processes (including educational socialization).

The concept of a creative class was introduced by Richard Florida in 2002 in his book The Rise of the Creative Class. The creative class consists of people involved in occupations recognised as inventive. This study is designed to identify capacities for the development of creative capital in the counties of Lithuania. Florida’s methodology for his creative model refers to the three powers of talent, technology and tolerance, which are determinants of development. The present assessment is based on generally available data acquired from the Statistical Yearbook of Lithuania. It takes into account information related to all the counties of the Republic of Lithuania. The accumulated data described are, at a relative level, the areas of talent, tolerance, technology and cultural amenities.

The strong interdependence of Member States’ legal orders was the reason why Member States decided for coordination and for monitoring each other’s legislative activity. Over the years, the Contracting States and the Union legislature have established more and more obligations referring to national legislatures in this respect. The most common of these are the well-known duties to transpose directives into national law. These EU legal acts contain substantive law, rights and/or obligations for individuals, and thus encompass material provisions that can be subject to a transposition process. However, this EU-wide harmonization is not the only way to influence national legal orders. This article deals with the kind of formal obligations which compel Member States to consult EU institutions on draft laws during their national legislative procedures. These obligations are of a procedural nature, with the outcome of the consultation procedure resulting in substantive law. This article shows that in respect to the Information Directive, the Court applies different criteria of inapplicability than it does for ‘typical’ or harmonizing directives. The Court examines the breach of the obligation to notify contained in the Information Directive, particularly if the criterion constituting a ‘substantial procedural defect’ renders such technical regulations inapplicable so that they may not be enforced against individuals. The Information Directive used to enjoy great attention from legal scholars and national courts as well as the Court of Justice of the European Union. The latter confirmed the Information Directive’s direct applicability in several cases. Sometimes it did not heed opinions of the General Advocates and established settled case law in this regard. In other cases, however, it declined the enforcement of this directive in proceedings between private parties. The goal was to avoid disruptions of the internal market. It thus limited the impact of the unconditional procedural obligations resulting from the Information Directive to cases impacting the internal market only. This may have been necessary since obligations to consult constitute unconditional duties and all Member States’ draft laws are supposed to be notified with no difference as to whether they refer to the internal market or not. The wording of the obligations to consult EU institutions rules that the Member State issuing a new law may act and – if it so desires – enforce the new national law. However, the state is not completely free in doing so: it cannot conduct the legislative process from beginning to end.

The fear of refugees and migrants that has flooded Europe in the last few years emphasises the threat posed to contemporary European culture by the supposedly radically different Islamic culture. However, the roots of European Islamophobia reach far beyond that, all the way back to the Crusades; while Central and parts of Eastern Europe have mostly been feeding these roots with memories of Ottoman invasions. After inspecting these roots, this article sheds light on the irrefutable Christian sources of European culture, but also exposes other influences without which the culture would not exist today – especially the antecedent Greco-Roman antiquity, and the subsequent Renaissance, Humanism and Enlightenment. This outlines modern European and Western culture, characterised mainly by secularity, which is the precondition for religious freedom of non-Christian, alternative, and ‘non-native’ religions as well. This article emphasises that it would be difficult to include Islam amongst these latter religions since it has been an important contribution to the shaping of European culture for centuries. The old antagonisms between European and Islamic cultures therefore do not stem from their irreconcilable differences but from their resemblances – in other words: in the West, we are not afraid of Muslims because they are so radically different but because they are strikingly similar. The real threat to European and Western culture is therefore not Muslim migrants but a demagogic fuelling of the fears of the supposed Islamic threat.