The case of the missing Editorial Blog Post (and journal team)

Here’s a wee puzzle: A mature Open Data focused journal (“Journal A”), owned and launched by an company or Institute (“Institute B”), developed into the flagship of an Academic Publisher (“Publisher C”), runs their own properly archived and citable blog with DOIs etc (“Blog D”). If a briefly published editorial Blog Post (“Editorial E”) disappears from their Blog, could it be an accident, or something else?

An accidental deletion of a blog post by a publisher suggests might be taken as incompetence, but if the post isn’t returned it starts to look deliberate to me. Normally I would have expected a formal retraction, but this feels like self-censorship in an effort to control public perception? Neither is a good look for a custodian of the Scientific Record.

Can you tell what I’m talking about yet? What if I hint the missing “Editorial E” blog post was by the out-going Editor In Chief of “Journal A”, celebrating many years of innovation, and noting the decision of “Institute B” to terminate the jobs of a large part of the team at “Publisher C”, and that this post on “Blog D” is/was the only announcement of those changes? Answer below…

What am I talking about?

Journal A: GigaScience (established 2012).
Institute B: BGI, formerly Beijing Genomics Institute.
Publisher C: GigaScience Press (co-publishing GigaScience with OUP since 2016, previously with BioMed Central).
Blog D: GigaBlog.
Editorial E: The blog post in question,

Edmunds, S. (2025, September 17). And it’s goodbye from me. GigaBlog. https://doi.org/10.59350/hzfr4-z0881

The abstract/description:

A new era is starting at GigaScience, today being the last day for the Hong Kong team including Nicole Nogoy, Chris Hunter, Peter Li, Mary Ann Tuli, Bastien Molcrette and Ken Cho. Joining them, and as outgoing Editor in Chief, I thought I would give my thoughts and perspectives on the last 15 years at the Open Science publishing coalface. It wasn't meant to end this way, but I'm still very grateful for the journey.

Originally published at https://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/and-its-goodbye-from-me/ this was automatically archived on Rogue Scholar at https://rogue-scholar.org/records/es553-ey605 with the DOI https://doi.org/10.59350/hzfr4-z0881 and currently with the original unavailable the DOI resolves to an archived copy at https://web.archive.org/web/20250917153106/https://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/and-its-goodbye-from-me/ instead.

The Open Bioinformatics Foundation's blog uses Rogue Scholar as an archive too, here’s our open letter on this news: GigaScience: 15 years of great open science publishing & the end of an era? (DOI https://doi.org/10.59350/z2mmn-v9c35 - taking post-publication signatures all of October).

I am not aware of any announcements from GigaScience, GigaScience Press, or BGI about these changes, but note as of late September 2025 the GigaScience homepage now lists Editor-in-Chief:
 Xun Xu, Executive Editor: Hongling Zhou, and Editors: Dongni Ma, Hongfang Zhang & Yannan Fan.