Adèle Mellen Prize

The Edwin Mellen Press or Mellen Press is an international independent company and academic publishing house with editorial offices in Lewiston, New York, and Lampeter, Wales. It was founded, in 1972, by the religious studies scholar Professor Herbert W. Richardson.

The press is a "non-subsidy academic publisher of books in the humanities and social sciences" releasing "Monographs, critical editions, collections, translations, revisionist studies, constructive essays, bibliographies, dictionaries, reference guides and dissertations". Most Mellen books are in English but many are also in a variety of other languages, including French, German, Spanish, and Russian.

History

When it was founded in 1972, the press's initial purpose was to publish specialized scholarship produced in Richardson's department at the University of St Michael's College (a Roman Catholic institution federated with the University of Toronto). Early releases by the press included bibliographies, translations, and dissertations completed by faculty and doctoral students at the University of Toronto.

Richardson operated the press, initially, from the basement of his home. He named it in honour of his grandfather, Edwin Mellen, who was a lover of books. Richardson's great-grandfather was Isaac Adams, a Massachusetts politician who invented the Adams Power Press, which revolutionized the printing industry.

Richardson expanded the press, year by year, publishing works by various scholars outside the University of Toronto, and the press's academic publishing programme broadened to the wider humanities and social sciences, including the fields of poetry, literature, philosophy, music, education and biblical studies among others. By 1979, the press had grown large enough to warrant larger premises, which Richardson found in Lewiston, New York and Queenston near the Canada-US border and Niagara Falls. The press was soon publishing as many as 150 titles a year and the Press opened a UK office in Lampeter, Wales, in 1987.

Scholarly publishing

While university presses often privilege submissions that will appeal to a wide readership, Mellen Press's main interest is whether a work will advance knowledge – even if it is in a highly specialized research area. The press publishes books written at doctoral and advanced level – it "values scholar-for-scholar research more than anything" and "the sole criterion for publication is that the manuscript must make a contribution to scholarship". All manuscripts are also independently peer-reviewed.

As a result, Mellen often publishes research that would otherwise be rejected by larger university presses, even on such esoteric topics as the history of the Macadamia nut industry in Hawaii, or the role of parrots in fiction. Research libraries are the single main market for Mellen Press's books, with the University of London holding 4,926 Mellen titles; and Harvard holding 4,731 titles.

The press's Adèle Mellen Prize is awarded to an author for a book which, in the considered judgment of the press’s independent peer-reviewers, is deemed to make a "distinguished contribution to scholarship". Recipients have included Joyce E. Salisbury (1985), Elizabeth A. Clark (1986), Karl W. Schweizer (1989), Masudul Alam Choudhury (2002), Mario I. Aguilar (2004), Hilmi M. Zawati (2004), Michael Egan (2006), Joëlle Rollo-Koster (2008), Nikolai Tolstoy (2009), Anna Novakov (2009), Bahar Davary (2009), and Sue Brannan Walker (2013), among others.

Selected published works

Mellen authors have included Marcus Borg, Francis J. Beckwith, Dan Cohn-Sherbok, Don H. Compier, David Craven, Richard Coates, Arthur J. Dewey, Herman Dooyeweerd, Nancy McCampbell Grace, Lisa Kahn, José Manuel Losada, Niklas Luhmann, M. Mukundan, David A. Rausch, Thomas P. Riccio, Hugh R. Page, Vladimir Shlapentokh, Ann Snodgrass, Albert Spaulding Cook, Frederick Stocken, Alan Mauritz Swanson, H. Micheal Tarver, Jean-François Thiriart, Huon Wardle, and Sherifa Zuhur, among others.

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Reception

Mellen Press has been described, incorrectly, as a vanity press (where authors pay to have their books published) despite the fact that the press is a "non-subsidy academic publisher" and does not accept any payments from authors. The Press has been known to sue critics in defense of its own, and its authors', reputations, with some critics claiming that this has further damaged its reputation (the Streisand Effect).

The press's litigiousness dates from 1993, when Robert West (a disgruntled former employee) contacted ''Lingua Franca'' describing Richardson as a "rogue professor" and Mellen as a "vanity press". West urged the magazine to publish an exposé. ''Lingua Franca'' commissioned Warren St John and published his account as the cover story for September/October 1993: "Vanity's Fare: the Peripatetic Professor and his Peculiarly Profitable Press". The article described Mellen as a "quasi-vanity press cunningly disguised as an academic publishing house" and, in particular, ridiculed a book Mellen had published by Joseph R. Washington, Jr., an African-American Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. In response, the Press took legal action for libel against West and ''Lingua Franca''. The Press's 1994 case against West was settled by West's letter of regret to Richardson for "the difficulties he had with ''Lingua Franca'' magazine and the University of Toronto"; clarifying "I do not believe Herbert Richardson to be a 'rogue professor' nor do I believe that the Edwin Mellen Press was organized to be a vanity operation". However, in 1996, the press lost its lawsuit against ''Lingua Franca'' on grounds that the article in dispute was "supported by an honest assessment of the facts at hand when the article was published".

In 1998, the press sued Oxford University Press concerning a review in one of its publications (the '' Journal of Theological Studies'') which claimed that Mellen was a vanity press. In a subsequent issue of the journal, Oxford University Press repudiated the offending statements, apologized, and published a new book review.

In 2009, the press was successful in suing the philosopher Thom Brooks (Newcastle University) for defamatory blog postings, including one entitled "More reasons to avoid Edwin Mellen Press". Brooks was required to pay financial damages and offered his "sincere apologies" to the Press saying he accepts "without reservation that Mellen does not charge authors anything to have their works published" and "now accepts that there was no truth in any of those allegations and that the criticisms he made...were unjustified".

In 2012, the press pursued lawsuits against McMaster University and one of its librarians, Dale Askey. While working at Kansas State University in 2010, Askey had criticized Mellen Press on his blog (a post he deleted shortly before the Press filed suit). The Canadian Association of University Teachers and others condemned the press for what they called SLAPP lawsuits intended to curtail academic freedom. Martha Reineke, a Professor of Religion at the University of Northern Iowa, started a petition demanding that the press drop the suits (garnering 2,691 names). In February 2015, the last of the lawsuits was settled out of court. Askey said, "The outcome of this case is essentially a neutral outcome for academic freedom. Both parties walk away from the matter admitting nothing and resolving nothing".

In 2013, the Press threatened legal action against The Society for Scholarly Publishing for publishing blog posts containing what it characterized as "disparaging comments" and for allowing "libelous statements" to be posted in the reader comments section on '' The Scholarly Kitchen''. These posts were first removed and then restored in their entirety; but a reader comment which Mellen Press had found objectionable was removed.

References

External links

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Academic publishing companies
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