How many snow jokes can there be?

Snow has hit Britain properly this year for the first time in 18 years (confessions of ages welcome and confessions who can’t remember yesterday let alone 18 years ago).
Well, all I can say is again ‘thank goodness for the electronic manuscript tracking system’. I was fortunate enough to be able to walk to work but wish I had not bothered as only 1 other person made it into the office (not bad out of about 50 staff). But all of the editorial assistants have broadband at home and were able to work at home. Now this may sound strange to a lot of you as you are thinking ‘but we work at home anyway’ as I know a lot of you are remote.
But as a publishing company with the editorial office kept in house it actually becomes quite a novelty to be able to be snowed in and still be able to work, as I mentioned in one of my first blog post ‘back in the day’ how did we survive without technology.
I used to work remotely about 6 or 7 years ago and found that I lost my enthusiasm for publishing, sometimes I would not see anyone from the office for weeks, we used to talk but was not the same. It got very lonely and did not find it very productive. I then went back full time to the office and then found my passion and enthusiasm again quite quickly. Would be interesting how people do it from home on a regular basis, and how European and US compare with speed of internet and what communication we use.

Now, on a different note, I started to read the new edition of EON this morning which is the members newsletter for ISMTE (which is worth the membership alone by the way) and came across an article from Jason Roberts titled ‘New approaches to Peer Review’. The title reminded me of discussions I have been having with journal editors for months about Peer Review. I have not read the article yet but I will later and I am sure I will comment on it. I mention this as I would like to tell you about the conversations I have been having, let me give you a taster for another day. ‘Why don’t we publish everything that is submitted to our journals?’ There that’s got you thinking.