Third year PGR Emily Glover reports on her visit to IOPP last week (19th February):
I visited the IOP Publishing headquarters in Bristol, to learn more about a career in scientific publishing. This was first introduced to me as a career opportunity in my first year, through a ‘Beyond a PhD’ talk presented by an editor from the Nature Communications journal. At that point, I wasn’t thinking about what I wanted to do after my PhD but as I progress, the idea of pursuing a career in scientific publishing and journalism remains. While I enjoy doing my research as part of the PhD, I also enjoy learning about other research that is done, both in my research field and Physics in general. Therefore, when I was given the opportunity to learn more about scientific publishing, I leapt at the chance.
During the day, I met with different employees who work in various different positions. Going into the day, I was aware of editors who received the manuscripts from researchers and moved them through the approval chain, however I learnt that there were many more jobs in publishing. These included the production of the papers, working with authors to make sure the manuscripts are publishable; managing the journals themselves, making sure that the journals were suitable for the readers and any emerging branches of physics could be published in them; and working with respected professors to commission books about high impact topics.
I was incredibly fortunate to have this opportunity, and learn more about what I hope will be my future career. It has shown me that there are more opportunities outside of research that I will be able to pursue, and given me ideas for where I want my future to take me.