Friday 18 July 2008

Taylor and Francis Young Researcher Focus Group

Yesterday I attended a Researcher Focus group event at publishing house Taylor and Francis' headquarters in Milton Park, Abingdon. Chaired by two senior academics, the day took the form of a structured discussion under a series of key headings. The intention was to gain a clear, accurate snapshot of current scholarly communication and research behaviours, particularly regarding social networking in academia and to ascertain the goals and aspirations of other young researchers.

There was also the chance to offer feedback on the publisher's online journal repository portal (found here) where I was personally very interested to see features such as iFirst implemented (a feature where journal articles are published immediately online as soon as they are accepted, rather than go through the usual 10-12 month wait, it would be fantastic if a trend like that takes off as a lot of research, particularly in technology-oriented fields, is sorely out of date by the time it gets published).

The publisher's official website is http://www.taylorandfrancis.com/.

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