You keep what you kill

No, this not an advertorial for an Asian electronics manufacturer. Although I'd be happy to do that, of course. *g* A bit more than a year ago I decided to quit my job and do something different. There were some other reasons besides just wanting to do sth else, but I'm not going to put them into writing in public. ;-) Suffice to say that I cannot recommend my former employer to anybody. Sad but true. But who gives a shit about the past anyway? In the last months working as a freelance consultant and project manager I had the great honour and pleasure of working on a lot of different projects for a variety of clients: some big, some small, some very intensive, some a bit more relaxed. But all of them very, very interesting and challenging. And the best of it: I get to meet new people all the time and find out how many great colleagues are out there and what a pleasure it is to help them achieve their goals.  And I like the independence, the freedom to work when and where I w...

I always found the realtionship between Science and Politics very fascinating. On the one hand, at least in Germany, a lot of scientists claim that is very important for them to be independent of politics. Which was for a lot of them never really true - most university salaries are paid by the state, a lot of research is funded by public money etc. But with the shift to open access this takes on a whole new meaning: Scientists will need government money (in most cases) to publish their results as well. So the dependence on government grows stronger and stronger. I'm not sure whether that is a healthy relationship and I'm also not sure whether that is what the OA movement had in mind originally. Given that most Western countries are becoming more and more nationalistic and authoritarian, it makes me wonder how these things will play out over the coming years. Interesting times ahead, be careful what you wish for ... .