Hypocrisy & Academic Freedom
A webinar about academic freedom is being sponsored by a publisher known for trying to constrain it
If I were to tell you that a publisher known for spamming authors, appealing to governmental authorities to impose a favorable business model, intimidating academics, and possibly colluding with old friends to create policies that again favor its business model would sponsor a meeting about academic freedom chaired by that same old friend — an individual who has notoriously denigrated expert communities and scholarly societies — you might think the world had gone a bit mad.
And you would be correct.
Reading the recent coverage of an upcoming webinar on academic freedom in Research Information — which does not include the date or time of the webinar being announced — one might think everything were on the up-and-up: