If you’re new to publishing or just starting out in your career, I highly recommend that you visit a publishing conference and listen to some of the talks to get a feel for the discussions and challenges in the industry. For the past 10 years, Open Access has been one of the main topics of conversation, but this topic has been thrown into the spotlight in the past 5 years due to Plan S (if you’re not sure what Plan S is, keep an eye out for my upcoming blog post on Open Access). It was not surprising then that many of the talks touched upon the topic of OA and open data. The Event Director Andy Ventris had also put together a top-notch range of speakers, including commercial publishers, researchers from key universities, and AI developers from tech companies. You can find the full programme and speaker list here.

Loaded up with conference freebies, business cards and a list of thank you emails to send out following my meetings, I headed home. Although I heard some useful titbits of publishing gossip (which for confidentiality I won’t be persuaded to share), the main takeaway for me from the London Book Fair 2022 is that networking is key to longevity in a career in publishing, even more so in the post-pandemic world.