Business Jargon - Get Used To It - The Scholarly Kitchen

October is here, and with it seems an uptick in the business meeting schedule. I personally have two publishing industry group board meetings this month, along with five separate strategy sessions with various journals and research societies. And with business meetings comes business jargon, and plans are set to synergize, monetize and leverage our actionable deliverables.

Despite how annoying you may find this sort of business-speak, you might as well get used to it. As the video below shows (from the really great Mental Floss etymology series), objectionable jargon has a way of evolving into common usage in a language. Words we commonly use today like “endorse”, “interview” and “contact” were all once considered vulgar and annoying.

David Crotty

@davidacrotty

David Crotty is a Senior Consultant at Clarke & Esposito, a boutique management consulting firm focused on strategic issues related to professional and academic publishing and information services. Previously, David was the Editorial Director, Journals Policy for Oxford University Press. He oversaw journal policy across OUP’s journals program, drove technological innovation, and served as an information officer. David acquired and managed a suite of research society-owned journals with OUP, and before that was the Executive Editor for Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press, where he created and edited new science books and journals, along with serving as a journal Editor-in-Chief. He has served on the Board of Directors for the STM Association, the Society for Scholarly Publishing and CHOR, Inc., as well as The AAP-PSP Executive Council. David received his PhD in Genetics from Columbia University and did developmental neuroscience research at Caltech before moving from the bench to publishing.