Today, the menu of the Scholarly Kitchen is expanding with the launch of our podcast, which is being edited and managed by Stewart Wills, whose Side Dishes you have likely become familiar with via his excellent Twitter feed.

The first episode is now available on iTunes. It’s an interview with Chef Ann Michael, President of DeltaThink, on the topic of, “What Customers Want.” Ann recently led a panel at the STM Spring Conference about, “Our New Customer Relationships: What Do They Expect?”

Our first program is also available for streaming below:

We will publish a post whenever a new episode is available, but won’t be inserting audio in the blog for long. We really want you to subscribe to the podcast.

The lovely icon for the podcast was designed by our trusted designer, Nicole Colovos, who continues to be quick, talented, and patient with bloggers.

The Scholarly Kitchen podcast will feature interviews with authors of recent posts, as well as original interviews with people and panels discussing various projects, issues, and trends in scientific and scholarly publishing. Our goal is to publish it every other week for the first few months, and more regularly if the audience grows and we’re able to keep up the pace.

Topics for the first few podcasts will include interviews with experts and bloggers on the following:

• Adventures with the Freedom of Information Act
• Reasons for optimism
• Making sense of MOOCs
• Altmetrics — no longer “alt”?
• Scientific societies and their battle for relevance
• Bibliometics in the age of abundance
• Disruption or expansion — which is it?

If you have topic ideas or would like to hear a blogger interviewed about a particular post, please email us at scholarlykitchen@sspnet.org.

I’d also like to include a special note of thanks to the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), for allowing us to use their audio production facilities to produce each podcast. AAAS is a wonderful organization that generates many good things both officially and as a byproduct of being generally terrific.

Happy listening!