My last encounter with a JK Rowling novel was an abortive attempt to get through a Harry Potter boxed set given to me as a present ten years ago (why did nobody have the guts to tell the world’s most successful author to make the Goblet of Fire and subsequent volumes shorter?). […]
Category: David Payne
David Payne: Listening to our readers and authors
A year ago today the BMJ’s new website went live. We launched with an explanatory video and a dedicated email address for you, our readers, to provide feedback. This blog is a summary of the many changes—some big, some small—that we’ve made over the last 12 months. […]
David Payne: How websites changed newspapers
The editor emailed me this to seek my views about how to make her weekly Editor’s Choice more relevant to the journal’s online readers. The article gets posted on bmj.com every Wednesday and appears in print two days later (all BMJ articles appear online ahead of print). Editor’s Choice helps busy print readers navigate that week’s issue, […]
David Payne: Innovation and scholarly publishing
At a conference I attended in Washington DC last week we discussed innovation in scholarly publishing. One activity was to fast forward to 2022 and imagine what would have changed in the industry. Would print be dead, replaced by tablet and other mobile apps? Will journals still exist in their current form? Might authors bypass […]
David Payne: Loos in Lagos
In a hot Washington DC two days ago I needed the toilet. I was on Wisconsin Avene in Georgetown. My English reserve suddenly overcame me. I dreaded the thought of pushing past clean-cut American families waiting outside restaurants to get a table for Sunday lunch and trying to spot signs for a washroom. In the […]
David Payne: The boy who can’t forget
I have a good memory. Actually I’m being modest. I have an amazing memory, according to friends and family. 29 June 1974. A Saturday. I was eight. We went on holiday to Hopton-on-Sea. 1 September 1977, a Thursday. My first day at secondary school. There was a girl in my class called Sarah Lowe. She […]
David Payne: MPs and their mental health
In a Guardian newspaper article this week Juliette Jowitt caught up with four MPs—including the former GP Sarah Wollaston, who stood up in the House of Commons last month to talk about their mental illnesses. Wollaston had described her experience of postnatal depression and panic attacks previously, but Conservative MP Charles Walker had only confided […]
David Payne: Review of “The Doctor’s Dilemma”
Medicine’s big guns beat a path to Dr Colenso Ridgeon’s consulting room after news of his knighthood is announced. Downstairs, the wife of a consumptive painter pleads with his housekeeper for an appointment in the hope that Ridgeon will cure him of his tuberculosis. In Shaw’s play, now showing at the National Theatre in London, […]
David Payne: Lord Ashley of Stoke
The BMJ tends not to commission obituaries of non-doctors. I can understand why. The journal’s print obituary section is already awash with the lives of distinguished doctors from the UK and overseas. It would need to be a lot larger if coverage was extended to eminent nurses, former health ministers, academics, and campaigners, But if its […]
David Payne: Changes to scholarly articles
Should the journal article change, and if so, how? In this multimedia age, the workforce is increasingly populated by people who grew up with the internet, scholarly publishers anticipate the demise of the traditional article and spend lots of time rethinking how best to present the information it contains. […]