Elisa Meschini joined the RSC as a Publishing Editor in late 2011. Here she shares some highlights from the past few years, and describes her role working with the Supplier Relations team.
As I write this, it occurs to me that it has been over 3 years since I started at the RSC and over 2 since I last wrote a blog post! It’s a pleasure to dip back into this to share some highlights from the last couple of years.
Many things in the organisation have changed in the last couple of years; many others, including the constant presence of cake, have remained the same. We have gone through a full
brand refresh process which, from the point of view of Publishing, has received good feedback and had a positive effect on the way we relate to our authors and readers. The Publishing department has grown in size and we have launched a number of new products, with the opportunity for many staff across the wider department to become involved in various development activities.
My team have had a fair bit to do over the past couple of years. We have launched a new portfolio of journals, the
Frontiers journals, a pioneering collaboration between the Royal Society of Chemistry and the Chinese Chemical Society. At the moment two journals have been launched as part of this portfolio,
Organic and
Inorganic Chemistry Frontiers, now both in their second volume, with many more titles in the pipeline. As the overall coordinator for the Frontiers journals, the year since their launch has been quite busy for me! The graphical databases on which my team were working last time I wrote here have been discontinued, and merged into an
exciting new product which at the moment is in the late stages of development, with a brand new team working on it. This exciting development was celebrated with (what else!) cake at the end of 2014.
As for me, while I still spend half my week working in my usual role with the Organic and Frontiers team (formerly the Synthetic Organic team), I now spend the other half of my week working with the Supplier Relations team. In my new role, I act as a point of contact for the external companies that we work with on many of our production activities. After a paper is accepted for publication after peer review, much work has to go into transforming the accepted version into an edited, formatted and paginated pdf ready for inclusion in a journal issue. This part of the job (which includes such activities as editing, which are relevant to the Publishing Editor role) has to be done both exceptionally well and exceptionally quickly. In order to achieve this challenging goal, we work with a number of external typesetting companies, who have worked with us over the years to develop increasingly sophisticated technologies aimed at delivering a final product full of added value for the benefit of our authors and readers. As part of my job with the Supplier Relations team, I liaise with our typesetters on a daily basis about their work with us and monitor it closely to ensure high quality at all times. I also play host to them when they come over to visit us to learn more about our in-house work, and will travel overseas to visit them in the coming months and years to learn more about
their in-house work.
As I was writing my
last blog post at the end of 2012 I was full of anticipation for the many opportunities that lay ahead for a fully trained Publishing Editor. Two years down the line, I am very happy to say that I was not disappointed! This is a job which is inherently varied and full of very diverse opportunities for personal development. I can’t even begin to predict what more will come in the next two years, but whatever it is I am very excited about it!
Elisa is working as a Publishing Editor in the Organic and Frontiers and Supplier Relations teams, in the Royal Society of Chemistry's Publishing Department. To see if there are any current vacancies in Publishing click here.
