🍏 Destruction of Knowledge

An original autobiographical fiction, 23rd October 2025

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Thumbnail Credits: National Gallery of Art, Open Access Collection

Hi Scholar,

This is Part 2 of the autobiographical fiction series we started earlier this month. If you missed Part 1, you can read it here. As in Part 1, the story is fictionalized, names have been changed, events altered etc. It is, however, based on a true story.

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Destruction of Knowledge (A Scholars Quest Part 2)

-Written by The Tatler

Monday, January 10th, 2022

The Art of The Sale

“Okay everyone,” beamed a woman with dark hair and a French accent, who was leading the Zoom call, “welcome to your first day as Journal Coordinators here at Open Horizon Press. I hope you’re all feeling proud to be part of an organization dedicated to improving society by making science open!”

Richard was feeling proud. He had been delighted to be offered a job in publishing after he left John's lab. It was, in his eyes, the perfect outcome. He could still remain involved in scholarship without having to be in academia. After all, publishing is an essential process to scholarly work; he was pleased to be facilitating research, even if he would no longer be doing it. His eyes drifted over the laptop screen in front of him. It was divided up into little boxes, each containing a face belonging to his new colleagues. He could see there were 74 participants on the call.

“My name is Sophie and I am the Journal Manager for Cell Biology Horizons.”

Richard sat up a little straighter. That was the journal he would be joining.

“It's hard for me to believe that I joined Open Horizon as a Coordinator myself only three years ago, and here I am training the next generation” she continued.

Damn, that was fast, thought Richard.

“Open Horizon is a mission-driven organization,” said Sophie, sharing her screen to show a slick, branded PowerPoint presentation. “We take our job of making science open very seriously. Which is why, only thirteen years after the first Horizons journal was launched, we are the third largest Open Access publisher by article volume in the world and the fourth most cited.”

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