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Academics have always been endowed with the privilege of autonomy, but the diffusion of evaluation systems based on publication outcomes potentially jeopardizes the benefits deriving from behaviors that address other pillars of higher education. Besides research and teaching, academic citizenship, i.e., the service behaviors carried out within and outside organizational boundaries, are in fact cornerstones of university functioning. We investigate the relationship between academic citizenship and research after the introduction of an evaluation system that moves research performance to center stage on a dataset collecting publication records and service activities of 353 Italian scholars in the accounting discipline in the 2004-2013 period. A cluster analysis reveals different academics' orientations towards research and academic citizenship. We contribute to the debate on academic choices by showing that a large number of university members tend to focus on a single type of academic citizenship or to adopt a research orientation, while a significant part remains stuck in the middle without achieving satisfying performance in any domains according to international standards, and discuss implications for the design of behavioral incentives.

Research excellence has been the main thrust of higher education reforms in several countries, but its translation into coherent policies has proved to be controversial. Literature has delved into the role exerted by contextual factors and individual characteristics in the adoption of behaviours inspired by social values. Our study aims at investigating the effect of individual and contextual features and their interplay in the quest for research excellence. We formulate and test hypotheses on a dataset collecting the publication records of the population of 4510 Italian academics in business and management and in architecture in the 2004-2013 period. Findings disclose that, alongside previous achievements, research-oriented settings favour research excellence. In addition, we show that a research-oriented context enhances the publication record of academics without highly ranked publications, whereas it slightly reduces the productivity of outstanding academics. Implications for public policy, especially in terms of performance measurement systems, are presented.

Although postsecondary education and advanced skills are critical for a better quality of life and greater earning potential, a large percentage of college students fail to earn degrees. In an attempt to understand this problem and improve student achievement and retention, this study identified the relationship between learning-style preferences and academic achievement among incoming freshmen at a large, private, urban university. The results revealed that specific learning-style preferences correlated with achievement and that learning-style preferences varied according to academic performance. (Contains 5 tables.)

This article describes Internet sites relating to special education with a global perspective. The Web Accessibility Initiative is described, as is the current standard for Web accessibility: "Bobby Approved". Webable, a provider of Web accessibility technology, the Archimedes Project, and a Web site for translating languages are also profiled. (CR)