I arrived by train from London and was thrown straight into networking upon arrival. Filled with nervous energy initially as I gradually remembered how these things go (it’s rare for me to have the opportunity to network in-person nowadays), I collected my badge and spotted members of my team already doing their thing in the reception area. Although I was a little green with envy when I saw my colleagues’ badges, adorned with a special blue ribbon denoting Frontiers’ status as a sponsor. For some reason this was missing from my badge, but I’ll forgive ALPSP for this.

I enjoyed the talks on the first day. One of the stand-out talks for me was the session on OA books, where the librarian from the University of Aberdeen (Simon Bains) made the rather pertinent comment: “Open Access is not just the stick that funders hit us over the head with.” What a relief! It was nice to hear (as someone from an OA publisher) that librarians are highly supportive of OA, despite some of the challenges of funding it.

In the evening, we had a great networking dinner where I caught up with colleagues from the organisation Society Street and enjoyed the atmosphere. Although networking was limited, because once bums were on seats, they didn’t move. Meaning the end of the very effective pre-dinner networking session. At the end of the evening, I noticed that ALPSP had put up a board where you could tie a string between the companies where you worked throughout your career. I took a lot of pleasure in picking my string colour, cutting a length of it, finding the companies I’ve worked for and tying on my string. It gave me a huge sense of pride.