David Smith

David is currently Head of Product Solutions at the Institution of Engineering and Technology (The IET). After he received his D.Phil. from the University of York, David decided to trade life as a scientist for a life in publishing. His introduction to scholarly publishing came via Vitek Tracz at Current Science Group and then BioMed Central. He’s been involved with the SSP for a number of years, first as an attendee of the annual meeting, then as an annual meeting committee member, as co-chair of the 32nd and 33rd meetings and most recently as Board Member at Large (2012 to 2015). When not involved in scholarly publishing, he likes to indulge in astronomy, tinkering with things, and restoring a 1960 1600 MGA that currently resides in his garage. He’s not on Facebook, but he does tweet (@drs1969).

Articles by David Smith

The Curse of Monkey Island

The photographer who got picked on by Wikimedia over his photo of a Back Crested Macaque, resulting in a claim of public domain for the image, has now been sued by PETA who claim that the monkey should hold the copyright and that he should pay damages. You couldn’t make it up.

Parallel Worlds? To What Extent are General Internet Trends Applicable to Scholarly Publishing?

A number of recent articles have posited the idea that information distribution on the Internet is undergoing a massive change – driven by the failure of site advertising and subscriptions as a general purpose economic model, and the rise of mobile powered social media as the discovery tool of these times. To what extent is this way of thinking applicable to scholarly publishing?