Elvis Has Left the Kitchen: Thanks Kent

As was announced yesterday, Elvis has left the building. Kent Anderson, the founder of this blog, has called it a day. And while he requested no fanfare to accompany the announcement, I couldn’t resist the opportunity to offer thanks.

As someone in our industry recently told me, “it’s hard to believe that there wasn’t always a Scholarly Kitchen.” Our community has long had a problem explaining to the world exactly what we do and the value that we add. Back in 2008 Kent, recognizing that importance of sharing information and getting our voices out to the world, launched The Scholarly Kitchen (first post here) as an experiment to see what could be done. Before I came onboard as an author, the blog provided a daily place to feel connected and to catch up with what was going on in my community. And I think The Scholarly Kitchen continues to fulfill that role.

As an editor losing my most prolific author and realizing how much space I’ll need to fill, I’m already nervous. As a reader, I’m going to miss Kent’s insight, his fearless ability to be provocative, and his willingness to explore the truths many were thinking but didn’t have the guts to say out loud. So thanks Kent, for building this forum and for helping us find our voice.

If you’ve been paying attention, you know that we’ve been adding some new voices to the Kitchen over the last few weeks, and more are on the way. We’ll get through this together:

If I’ve managed to depress you, then I’ve done my job.

David Crotty

@davidacrotty

David Crotty is a Senior Consultant at Clarke & Esposito, a boutique management consulting firm focused on strategic issues related to professional and academic publishing and information services. Previously, David was the Editorial Director, Journals Policy for Oxford University Press. He oversaw journal policy across OUP’s journals program, drove technological innovation, and served as an information officer. David acquired and managed a suite of research society-owned journals with OUP, and before that was the Executive Editor for Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press, where he created and edited new science books and journals, along with serving as a journal Editor-in-Chief. He has served on the Board of Directors for the STM Association, the Society for Scholarly Publishing and CHOR, Inc., as well as The AAP-PSP Executive Council. David received his PhD in Genetics from Columbia University and did developmental neuroscience research at Caltech before moving from the bench to publishing.