Author: ab4410

The final chapter

The past month seems to have flown by. When Friday rolled around, I couldn’t believe that I’d already spent 4 weeks working at the Royal Society. I guess that’s a good sign though. It’s been such a great experience and certainly something I’d recommend to all PhD students. It can be so useful to have something lift you out of the PhD bubble for a little while…

Thinking about the internship overall, I feel like I’ve managed to get a lot out of the placement given it was relatively short. I really benefited from having the mixture of helping out on the typical day-to-day editorial tasks and working on some of my own mini projects (for the RS anniversary issue and Neuroscience marketing strategy).

Death masks and Franklin’s guide on how to be struck by lightning

Apparently death masks were all the rage in the past…especially for highly important people like Isaac Newton. The one that I saw last week was taken as a guide for the artist who had been commissioned to make Newton’s tomb in Westminster Abbey. This wasn’t the only Newton goodie (if you can call it that!) on display when I was taken on a tour of the Royal Society’s Library and Archive last week. There was also a lock of his hair, the original manuscript of Principia, a diary detailing the first recorded version of the famous apple story and even a piece of bark from that fateful apple tree.

Earning my publishing stripes and golden maces

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.

Week One at Royal Society Publishing

This week I started my Charity Insights internship at the publishing office of Royal Society. I’m sure that most of you will have at least heard of the Royal Society (if not, here’s the wiki page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Society for a quick blurb) It’s the oldest scientific academy still in existence and I ended up there because I’m interested in the work they do in communicating science and emphasizing the cultural role that science has to play in society.  Oh and because I wanted to get a taste of academic publishing and their publishing division just happen to bring out some great journals!