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Edwin Mellen Press
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]
- Confessions of a Science Librarian: A substantial list of links detailing the whole tale (which would be nice to extend this article).
References[edit]
- ↑ Chronicle forum thread, in which multiple posters suggest that being published by them will hurt your academic record for tenure.
- ↑ The original blog post.
- ↑ The suit.
- ↑ Jake New. "Librarians Rally Behind Blogger Sued by Publisher Over Critical Comments." The Chronicle of Higher Education. 2013 February 14.
- ↑ Rebecca Moore. "The Strange Case of Garry Scarff." The Jonestown Report. Volume 5, November 2007.