This is not news, but there have been enough instances of it lately that it seems worth mentioning: a common strategy for serials publishers and vendors who feel beleaguered is to do whatever it takes to quiet open dissent.

This can certainly take the form of silencing, as in the Dale Askey case, but it need not. The Loon saw quite a few conference tweets a week or so ago about a publisher (left politely unnamed) who offered open-access advocate Bernard Rentier of the University of Lièges a better serials deal if he’d just agree to stop advocating. Today, Charleston Conference tweets noted that SAGE wants to talk to Jenica Rogers because of her public critique of their grabby pricing schemes. Notably, SAGE wants to talk; written correspondence is apparently unacceptable.

The first case is bribery. The second is at minimum placation, though the Loon would not be especially surprised if Rogers’ acceptance of the chat invitation (n.b. she has not accepted it) turned into attempted bribery. (Attempted silencing is also possible, but in this specific case seems unlikely, certainly fruitless.) What the cases have in common is that the vendor’s ultimate goal is less public speech and less advocacy, partly by way of making potential public dissenters feel isolated because no one else is dissenting publicly.

How to oppose these tactics seems obvious to the Loon…

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