Research+Papers

Research papers can be found in many repositories and bibliographies:

 * EdIT Library has several thousand articles about Second Life
 * Australian Research Online has many articles about Second Life
 * A bibliography of Second Life Educational Online Resources by Mark Pepper is sadly no longer available on the Purdue website.
 * Bibliography from the book Real Learning in Virtual Worlds by Dianne Bishop (2008)
 * Virtual Reality and Education: Information Sources: A Bibliography by Veronica S Pantelidis

Here are links to some other papers:

 * Learning in the Wild of a Virtual World

Journals about virtual worlds:
Journal of Virtual Worlds Research Journal of Gaming and Virtual Worlds

Special issue of [|BJET] (41,3) on Virtual Worlds in May 2010

Concepts
The concept of "Real Virtuality" by Castelles where the virtual is real.