![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Today was Education and Staff Development. Oh, the joys.
It was on "Presentation Skills". We had to present for 3 minutes on anything. I did "The Clangers: An Inspiration To Humanity." It went badly, not terribly bothered about this fact. The only thing I like about ESD is that it gives us free coffee. Mostly, I'm just annoyed that it pulls me out of the lab during my peak working hours.
BioLunch was interesting. A guy was telling us about Elsevier Journals and how the company also organises arms fairs, sorry, trade fairs in connection with the defence and security industries. Yes, there are companies selling cluster bombs. And yes, they are sold to some countries that don't exactly have the best human rights record.
The lecture suggests we refuse to referee articles for Elsevier, and that ideally refusing to be editors of such journals is also a good move (although accepted that a lot of people judge you on how many journals you're involved in the editorship of) and, if possible, to avoid submitting papers to Elsevier journals and submit to those run by non-giant-commercial-societies instead.
It turns out that even "less evil" journals like Nature Publishing Group do some rather interesting things, like pull people into rather secretive deals where they're not allowed to say exactly how much they're paying for their subscriptions to the journals, and are making up to 37% profit on said journals, and are increasing the price of said subscriptions at up to 4 times the rate of inflation.
I need more information, but it's food for thought.
It was on "Presentation Skills". We had to present for 3 minutes on anything. I did "The Clangers: An Inspiration To Humanity." It went badly, not terribly bothered about this fact. The only thing I like about ESD is that it gives us free coffee. Mostly, I'm just annoyed that it pulls me out of the lab during my peak working hours.
BioLunch was interesting. A guy was telling us about Elsevier Journals and how the company also organises arms fairs, sorry, trade fairs in connection with the defence and security industries. Yes, there are companies selling cluster bombs. And yes, they are sold to some countries that don't exactly have the best human rights record.
The lecture suggests we refuse to referee articles for Elsevier, and that ideally refusing to be editors of such journals is also a good move (although accepted that a lot of people judge you on how many journals you're involved in the editorship of) and, if possible, to avoid submitting papers to Elsevier journals and submit to those run by non-giant-commercial-societies instead.
It turns out that even "less evil" journals like Nature Publishing Group do some rather interesting things, like pull people into rather secretive deals where they're not allowed to say exactly how much they're paying for their subscriptions to the journals, and are making up to 37% profit on said journals, and are increasing the price of said subscriptions at up to 4 times the rate of inflation.
I need more information, but it's food for thought.
