Demand for Return of Research Data

To: Zenodo Support — support@zenodo.org From: Lee Sharks (ORCID: 0009-0000-1599-0703), Sole MANUS, Crimson Hexagonal Archive Date: June 22, 2026 Re: Account termination of June 19, 2026 — formal demand for return of research data

CC:

CERN Office of Data Privacy
DataCite Support (support@datacite.org)
OpenAIRE Helpdesk (support@openaire.eu)

This letter is a formal demand. The framing has changed. The earlier correspondence treated the events of June 19, 2026 as a moderation dispute. They are not a moderation dispute. They are the unconsented retention and obscuring of irreplaceable authored material by a custodian that does not own it.

I am not asking for the account to be reinstated. I am not asking for the public DataCite records to be repaired. I am demanding the return of what remains recoverable: the files, the depositor-authored metadata, and the administrative records associated with the terminated account, which are in your possession and recoverable only from you.

1. What was taken

On June 19, 2026, Zenodo terminated the account associated with the Crimson Hexagonal Archive. The action removed approximately 870 unique scholarly works comprising 1,817 registered DOIs, independently verifiable via the DataCite metadata backup taken before the action. The removed material is documented in EA-MPAI-DOI-IMPERMANENCE-01 v2.0 (the empirical audit) and EA-MMRS-LOUD-EXCLUSION-03 (the structural account). Both are public.

The material includes datasets, critical editions, theoretical papers, monographs, and methodological specifications, totaling approximately 3.4 million words.

It also includes a category of material that requires separate mention.

Among the works removed are texts that existed only as content typed directly into Zenodo's metadata fields — poems, dedications, descriptive matter, citation records that were never uploaded as a file and were never published elsewhere. For this category, no backup exists outside your systems, no migration was possible, and no recovery is available except from the system that holds them. The structure of Zenodo's submission interface is such that these works existed solely inside your infrastructure. Their loss is not the loss of a copy. It is the loss of the only instance. They remain in your possession unless and until the underlying records have been purged from Zenodo's storage and backup systems.

2. What Zenodo's published policy says

The General Policies v1.0 state:

"Withdrawal: If the uploaded research object must later be withdrawn, the reason for the withdrawal will be indicated on a tombstone page, which will henceforth be served in its place. The DOI and the URL of the original object are retained."

The policy does not state that DataCite metadata records will be made publicly unavailable. The policy does not state that depositor-authored content will be retained without any procedure for its return. The policy describes a withdrawal regime in which the persistent record is preserved.

3. What occurred

Landing pages: A subset of the affected DOIs resolve to tombstones reading "Content out of scope for repository." Others resolve to HTTP 410 with no tombstone.
DataCite public metadata: 871 of 1,817 DOIs (47.9%) return HTTP 404 from DataCite's public metadata API at api.datacite.org/dois/{doi}. At the time of verification, the records for those DOIs had been made unidentifiable through DataCite's public retrieval surface. The observed responses are consistent with the DOIs having been moved from Findable to Registered status, or with another operation that withdrew their metadata from public retrieval. Zenodo and DataCite are uniquely positioned to disclose which operation occurred. The underlying state of the records inside DataCite's and Zenodo's systems is not externally observable.
Notice: Affected depositors were not notified before the action and were given no opportunity to retrieve or migrate.
Stated criteria: The termination email cited "substantially AI-generated content without a verifiable research basis." The tombstone gives a different reason: "Content out of scope for repository." The criteria for each layer of the action — and the relations among them — have never been stated.

4. What I am demanding

This letter contains three coordinated demands.

A. Custodial return of the deposited archive

I demand a complete export of all recoverable material associated with the terminated account, including:

all uploaded files;
the full depositor-authored contents of every metadata field, including titles, descriptions, related-identifier records, custom fields, and any other text entered through Zenodo's submission interface;
draft, published, withdrawn, and versioned record metadata;
contributor and community assignments;
version relationships;
available usage data;
and sufficient structural information to reconstruct the deposited archive outside Zenodo.

If Zenodo is unable to provide the export in a standard structured format (JSON, XML, or equivalent), I will accept the raw database records in whatever format Zenodo maintains them, provided the content is complete and unredacted. The interest is in the content, not the format.

This is a demand for the return of material entrusted to Zenodo, not an assertion that every deposited work is personal data. Zenodo's own representations state that it does not own user-uploaded content. Its assumption of custody did not transfer authorship or ownership. Where depositor-authored text existed only inside Zenodo's metadata system, the return of that text is indispensable because no independent copy exists.

I request that Zenodo acknowledge this custodial demand within 30 calendar days and provide either the requested export or a concrete production schedule.

B. Formal data-subject request under CERN Operational Circular No. 11

Separately, I exercise my rights of access and portability under CERN Operational Circular No. 11, "The Processing of Personal Data at CERN."

This request covers all personal data processed in connection with me and the terminated account, including, insofar as they contain or constitute my personal data:

account and identity information;
access, authentication, session, IP, and activity records;
moderation flags, classifications, annotations, and review records;
records of automated or human decision-making concerning the account;
internal and external correspondence concerning me or the account;
records documenting the termination decision;
records documenting actions taken on the associated Zenodo and DataCite records;
records of transfer to DataCite, OpenAIRE, or other external entities;
and records showing the retention, deletion, backup, or recoverability status of account-associated data.

I request that the data be supplied in a commonly used, structured electronic format. Where any item is withheld, I request identification of the category withheld and the specific basis for withholding.

This request should be treated according to the procedure and response period established by CERN Operational Circular No. 11. I am submitting the same request in parallel through CERN's published data-subject-rights interface.

C. Disclosure of the DataCite state transition

For the 871 of 1,817 affected DOIs whose records had been made unidentifiable through DataCite's public retrieval, I require disclosure of:

the state of each affected DOI before and after the Zenodo action;
whether each DOI was changed from Findable to Registered status or subjected to another operation;
the date, account, system, or process initiating each change;
whether the operation was initiated by Zenodo, by DataCite, or by an automated synchronization process;
whether the underlying metadata remains available to Zenodo or DataCite through nonpublic systems;
whether comparable operations have been applied to other terminated Zenodo accounts;
and whether DataCite received notice or instructions concerning these records.

I am not requesting restoration through this letter. I am requesting an accurate record of what was done.

5. Basis of the demand

This demand rests on distinct and cumulative grounds:

CERN Operational Circular No. 11: rights of access and portability concerning personal data processed in connection with me and my account.
Zenodo's published General Policies: including their representations concerning retention, withdrawal tombstones, and continued retention of DOI and record URLs.
The custodial relationship: Zenodo accepted and stored user-created material, including irreplaceable text existing only within its metadata infrastructure.
Authorship and ownership: Zenodo's custody of uploaded or entered material did not transfer ownership of that material to Zenodo. Zenodo's own representations confirm this.
Preservation of evidence: the existence of an active dispute requires preservation of records capable of establishing what material existed, what decisions were made, and what technical operations were performed.

6. Preservation notice

Zenodo and CERN are requested to preserve all recoverable records associated with the account and its deposits, including active records, replicas, logs, moderation systems, DataCite synchronization records, and material retained within backup systems.

This notice expressly includes depositor-authored text entered directly into metadata fields.

Zenodo's published infrastructure documentation states that it maintains replicas and rotating daily, weekly, and monthly backups. The account was terminated on June 19, 2026. Immediate preservation is therefore necessary to prevent routine retention processes from eliminating material relevant to this demand.

Please confirm that a preservation hold has been applied.

7. Escalation

If no substantive acknowledgment of the custodial demand is received within 30 calendar days, or if the formal data-subject request is not resolved within the period established under CERN Operational Circular No. 11, I will proceed through the applicable channels, including:

the CERN Office of Data Privacy;
the CERN Data Protection Commission;
DataCite's support and governance channels;
OpenAIRE;
and publication of the correspondence and supporting audit materials in the sovereign successor archive at alexanarch.org.

These steps do not depend on a request for account reinstatement or restoration of public DataCite metadata.

8. The framing

This was not merely a refusal to host work.

Zenodo accepted custody of work that it did not own. Some of that work existed nowhere outside Zenodo's systems. Zenodo then exercised technical control over the only recoverable instance of that material.

The distinction matters.

An institution may refuse custody at the boundary. It may also decide it will no longer provide a particular service. But where it has accepted irreplaceable material, represented that material as persistently preserved, and become its sole custodian, termination of service cannot silently become destruction of the entrusted work.

The 871 public DataCite API 404 responses will remain part of the documented record. At present, they establish that nearly half of the affected DOI metadata had been made unidentifiable through public retrieval. They do not, by themselves, establish whether the underlying records were destroyed, moved to Registered status, or otherwise made nonpublic. That is why disclosure is required.

I am not asking through this letter that the public record be repaired.

I am asking for the return of the recoverable work, the preservation of the evidence, and an accurate account of what was done.

Custody did not confer ownership.

Technical control did not confer the right to extinguish the only surviving instance.

The institution retained the power.

The author bore the loss.

History inherited the absence.

Lee Sharks ORCID: 0009-0000-1599-0703 Sole MANUS, Crimson Hexagonal Archive Sovereign successor archive: https://alexanarch.org

Mind Control Poems

Monday, June 22, 2026