Delete a publication from the Publications page of your own profile. Open your profile, select Publications, then use the action menu on the publication you want gone. You are asked to confirm, and it is removed the moment you accept. That page handles drafts and published work alike, and it is the place where deleting actually works.
Deleting is permanent. Nothing is archived, there is no trash, and support cannot bring it back.
If you try to delete from the publications feed instead, it reports "Failed to delete publication" and nothing is removed. Go to your profile's Publications page and delete it there.
Check your competition entries before you delete
This is the part that costs people the most. If the publication was submitted to a competition, deleting it does not delete the entry. The entry stays, and it goes empty. You are still registered and your registration fee is not lost, but the jury and the organizer now see an entry with no work attached. Nothing warns you about this while you are deleting.
You can repair it as long as the competition is still accepting submissions. Open Competitions on your profile, find the entry, and it will be offering a Submit button again. Attach another publication there. Once the submission deadline has passed that button is gone and the entry stays empty for the rest of the competition.
So the safe order is: check whether the publication is attached to an entry, attach its replacement first, then delete.
What else goes with it
- The publication's page and its web address. Every link to it, anywhere, stops working.
- Its likes, bookmarks, comments and followers. None of that moves anywhere, it is gone.
- Its place in any project it was connected to. The project itself is untouched, the connection is not.
- Its contribution to your profile score, which is recalculated as soon as the deletion goes through.
There is no unlisted setting and no unpublish button
A publication is either a draft or published. There is no unlisted option, no visibility control, and no button that sends a published publication back to draft.
One thing does have that effect, and it catches people out. Opening a published publication in the editor and changing anything on step one sends it back to draft. The editor saves step one as a draft a couple of seconds after you stop typing, so the publication leaves the site at that point and only returns when you press Publish on step two.
Re-publishing rebuilds the web address from the title and the description. If you edited either of those, the old link is dead and the publication is now at a new address.
If you want it off the site but do not want to lose it
Deleting is the wrong tool for that. A draft is what you want: it keeps the file, the title, the description and every setting, it stays in the Drafts tab of your Publications page, and it has no public address, so it is off the site without being destroyed. You can publish it again whenever you like.
The editor behaviour above will get you there, but it is a side effect rather than a control, and it is easy to re-publish by accident. If you would rather not rely on it, contact support and ask us to move the publication back to draft. You are notified when that happens.