A university librarian who described Edwin Mellen Press on his blog as “dubious” and as offering “second-class scholarship” was sued in turn by the press, but the lawsuit has now been dropped.
The lawsuits inspired scholars from around North America to rally behind Askey. Created by Martha Reineke, a professor of religion at the University of Northern Iowa, a petition demanding EMP to drop its lawsuits had garnered more than 3,100 names as of Monday morning.
EMP told CBC Hamilton on Monday that it “has discontinued the court case against McMaster University and Dale Askey.”
In a statement, the company added: “financial pressure of the social media campaign and press on authors is severe. EMP is a small company. Therefore [it] must choose to focus its resources on its business and serving its authors.”
The key words appear to have been “social media campaign.” In the relatively small world of academic publishing, it got results.
I notice that Mellen’s website describes them as a “non-subsidy academic publisher.” That was not always my impression, but OK. Another page, however, states “The Edwin Mellen Press refuses to write, rewrite, or revise any author’s text.” Not hiring copy editors saves money!
UPDATE: See comments.
Hi,
From what I’ve read, only one of the two lawsuits Edwin Mellen Press filed has been dropped. They have dropped the joint suit between McMaster and Askey, but the suit against Askey alone is still live. Here’s a link to Askey’s twitter feed, where I confirmed this information: https://twitter.com/daskey/status/308665884182990848
Askey has my sympathies. I resolved years ago to have nothing to do with Mellen, and this is a good reason why.
“Not hiring copy editors saves money!” As the mainstream press already knows… that’s why there’s so many grammatical, punctuation and spelling errors nowadays. Sigh… My high school English teacher must be rolling in her grave.
They once collared me at a conference and were whorishly desperate to get my current book. It seemed pretty clear to me (I’d not see any of their books) that they were a bit dodgy…