With the second week of the internship came that feeling of settled-ness where you enter the comfort zone of knowing what you’re doing and is expected of you. Although there’s still plenty of variety in the tasks that I’m assigned so there’s no time to get complacent or procrastinate really! Some new tasks I’ve been helping with include making promotional flyers for forthcoming editions of the journal. I also worked with another of the editors in the department to select reviewers for articles submitted to Interfac,e a more conventionally structured research journal published by the RS. It was really interesting finding out some of the different approaches taken for this journal, compared to TransB. It’s great to get this experience, as one of the major draws of the Charity Insights placement for me was to discover as much as possible about the world/process of academic publishing.
There was further development in my responsibilities as I started the first of my special mini projects. For it, I’m helping to develop the marketing strategy for TransB. To this effect, I’ve started to put together a marketing plan/report for the forthcoming Neuroscience and Cognition theme issues. There’s a nice batch of really interesting editions coming out over the next couple of months so I’m trying to think of more inventive ways to get them the attention they deserve! (Trying not to disappoint with my «insider» knowledge of the neuroscience field (!!)…ahem) It’s fun coming up with new ideas, especially trying to introduce more social media marketing. One of the benefits of coming into a relatively small publishing department (rather than going through an internship with a large commercial publisher) is how closely the editorial/production and marketing sections work together. Their offices are next door and throughout the day, there is constant interaction and collaboration between the departments. I’ll get a chance to discuss some of the ideas I’ve come up with so far in a meeting tomorrow with the marketing coordinator of the publishing division.
Another aspect of the past week which I’ve really enjoyed was meeting representatives of some of the other departments within the Royal Society. The ones I was most interested in finding out about were the Science Policy and Science Communication sections. These are both really important directions for RS and I guess their overall objective is quite similar: disseminating science to a wider audience whether they’re acting to make science more accessible for politicians or the general public,. Emma from Science Policy took me through some of the great work she’s involved in which includes translating science into reports for both local and international government bodies in order to implement more evidence-guided policies. She’s worked on some really important issues such as climate change, UN development goals, etc and the job seems to strike a nice balance between keeping up to date with exciting developments in science and using them to drive change. On the other hand, Rose from Science Communication talked how work in her department is more concerned with communicating research to the general public. The RS organises loads of great events such as public lectures and the annual summer science exhibition throughout the year, as well as bringing out regular podcasts and video interviews with some of their fellows.
If you’ve managed to make it to the end of this week’s blog, congratulations! As a reward here’s the picture of the golden mace promised by the title. It was a gift from Charles II to the RS.
Ooooooh shiny.