If you have been reading the financial pages in daily newspapers this year, then alongside articles on moribund mobile-phone companies, the declining value of the FTSE index and black holes in pension schemes, you may have seen news about the normally obscure world of learned journals, Elsevier, the world's largest publisher, has experienced a dramatic revival under a new chief executive and is a City darling once again. And two other familiar names, Springer and Kluwer, have been acquired by the venture capitalists Cinven and Candover, who no doubt see academic publishing as an excellent place to invest. Can this be the same business we all feared would fall victim to the Internet and falling library budgets?
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