Edwin Mellen Press

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Edwin Mellen Press is an exceedingly dubious academic press, famous amongst university librarians for publishing works of second-class scholarship.[1] It made itself even more famous as a dubious publisher when, in late 2012, it brought a defamation suit for $3 million against a university librarian who criticised it on their blog.[2][3][4]

Another thing they were upset about was a commenter on the blog post who said they were Scientologists. This claim is indeed absolutely false. They're actually Moonies.[5]

Their business model is to sell books of mediocre scholarship at stupendous markups to a perceived captive market of librarians, which is why they are quite so upset at a librarian calling them out.

"We do not know why the criticism persists," says the publisher in their newsletter, "but this problem has gone on for some time and has done a great deal of damage." Indeed.

External links[edit]

References[edit]

  1. Chronicle forum thread, in which multiple posters suggest that being published by them will hurt your academic record for tenure.
  2. The original blog post.
  3. The suit.
  4. Jake New. "Librarians Rally Behind Blogger Sued by Publisher Over Critical Comments." The Chronicle of Higher Education. 2013 February 14.
  5. Rebecca Moore. "The Strange Case of Garry Scarff." The Jonestown Report. Volume 5, November 2007.