In May 2014, Prometheus published one of its occasional debates on innovation, this one about the academic publishing industry. The industry’s product has become less academic knowledge than the indicators of academic performance. These determine the allocation of most of the resources higher education requires, a reality suggested by the debate’s proposition paper, ‘Publisher, be damned! From price gouging to the open road’. The paper’s authors are David Harvie, Geoff Lightfoot, Simon Lilley and Kenneth Weir, all from the centre for philosophy and political economy at what was then Leicester university’s school of management and is now its school of business. The school of management long housed the country’s major centre for research and teaching in critical management. Weir left Leicester for Heriot Watt university a year back; the other three authors face dismissal next month in Leicester university’s purge of critical management.