The Scholarly Kitchen Removes Posts Re: Edwin Mellen Publishers, Following Letter from Lawyer

UPDATE (April 3, 2012): The Scholarly Kitchen Reinstates Removed Posts

The decision to reinstate the posts was made by the Board of Directors of the Society for Scholarly Publishing, publisher of The Scholarly Kitchen.

From a guest post on The Scholarly Kitchen blog by Carol Anne Meyer, President, Society for Scholarly Publishing:

For many reasons I won’t go into the ingredients of the sausage by explaining why the posts came down and why they went back up. I will say that the Board and the Scholarly Kitchen volunteers stand behind Rick’s posts. The Board also stands behind the business and editorial decisions to take them down last week, until we could gather our busy volunteer leaders to fully evaluate the situation.

This decision by the Board is an unusual one. The Board has never before made any kind of editorial decision regarding the Scholarly Kitchen. The Board stepped in here at the request of me, our Executive Director, and Kent Anderson, who is both the SSP Board’s President-elect and the founder, Editor-in-Chief, and driving force behind the ScholarlyKitchen. We requested that the Board evaluate the situation and make a decision because of the impact any action might have on the finances of the organization, the finances of our volunteers, and on our reputation.

Read the Complete Post

infoDOCKET commends SSP on their decision to reinstate the material.

—–End Update

After receiving letters from the attorney for Edwin Mellen Press (EMP), The Scholarly Kitchen has decided to remove two posts where contributor Rick Anderson, a librarian, discusses and shares his opinions about EMP lawsuits against Dale Askey and McMaster University.

In a blog post today, Kent Anderson, editor of the blog, shares the full text of the letters from the EMP attorney.

One of the letters was copied to The Scholarly Kitchen but was actually sent to Kristine Hunt, a copyeditor who shares comments below one of Anderson’s blog posts about EMP.

Hopefully, The Scholarly Kitchen will share why they decided to remove the posts but for now I want to focus on a related issue.

Removed vs. 100% Inaccessible

I want to point out that this situation is an example that even if material is “removed” from a web site it does not automatically become inaccessible to those who want to read it.

In other words, although The Scholarly Kitchen decided to formally take the posts offline but Anderson’s are still online and accessible.

Both posts (including the post with Hunt’s comments) are easily and quickly accessible via The Wayback Machine and caches from Bing, Google, Yandex and others. Not to mention, individuals who have made their own copies of the articles and share via email or post them on their own web sites.

• Removed Article #1 (via Bing Cache)
• Removed Article #2, Includes Comments EMP Doesn’t Like (via The Wayback Machine)

This fact is not only important for info pros to remember but for us to share with others. Attempting to get something 100% removed and made inaccessible on the web is very difficult if NOT impossible. Once you hit send or post, it’s out of your control.

Direct to “Posts Removed Because We’ve Received Letters From Edwin Mellen Press’ Attorney” (via The Scholarly Kitchen)

See Also: Comments from The Scholarly Kitchen Editor, Kent Anderon About Removing the Docs (via COHE)