Oxford University
An interview with Dr Charles Young, founding Editor-in-Chief of Research Connections
We’re pleased to appoint Dr Charles Young as the founding editor-in-chief of Research Connections.
Research Connections is our new broad scope, global healthcare journal, which will support the scientific community driving increased understanding and awareness of diseases, treatments, health technologies, and health processes through the publication of high-quality and scientifically rigorous research.
The journal joins over 150 open access journals in our collection, and will allow important research to be discovered and reused worldwide, as well as provide authors with a quick route to publication without compromising on quality.
Dr Young is an experienced, editor-in-chief, publisher, and medical writer. He trained as an emergency physician and now works in a range of clinical, academic, and commercial healthcare leadership roles.
Here, we find out about Dr Young’s motivation for taking on the role and his vision for the journal.
Can you share a bit about your background and what led you to this role?
As an emergency physician and senior healthcare academic, I am passionate about helping individuals as well as driving real improvements in global healthcare. My background has been a mixture of clinical, academic, and commercial healthcare and so I am extremely excited about combining those three pillars into our new journal, Research Connections.
Being founding editor-in-chief is a huge opportunity for me to work with the OUP team and, together, create a market-leading journal that will have a real and measurable impact on improving people’s lives around the world. The journal will focus on existing and pioneering new research evaluated using sound science principles, and prioritize quality, reproducibility, and impact over novelty to ensure that foundational research is utilized effectively. I am also determined to make Research Connections a truly inclusive journal, ensuring we do all we can to cater to the need of the full spectrum of researchers, reviewers, and readers.
What is your vision for the future of this journal? How do you see it supporting the healthcare and research community?
Research Connections’ overarching purpose is to make the world a better place.
To achieve this purpose, my vision is that Research Connections will be internationally respected for our success, supporting clinicians and academics in their work to treat illnesses and injuries. By driving increased understanding and awareness of diseases, treatments, health technologies, and health processes through the publication of high-quality and scientifically rigorous research, we will create an inclusive world-leading healthcare community with the journal at its centre. We will publish a wide range of article types and have an ethos of open and transparent publication processes, enhancing the healthcare evidence base, furthering research insight, and ultimately, supporting medical decision-making. We will work closely with a broad range of globally prestigious medical societies and associations who are part of OUP’s respected publishing programme.
And crucially, we will always remember that our role is to serve our authors, reviewers, and readers, ensuring that they receive a high-quality service so that, as a community, we can further the advancement of healthcare to relieve suffering and make the world a better place.
As you begin shaping the Research Connections community—bringing together editors, reviewers, authors, and readers—what message would you share with someone discovering the journal for the first time? What makes this community valuable, and why should they be part of it?
For people discovering the journal for the first time, I want them to feel welcome, I want them to be impressed by what they see, and I want them to intuitively understand how to interact with us as a reader, author, reviewer, or—better still—all three of those roles!
Our real value to global healthcare will be to work together as a community with a shared purpose, and through that collective approach, make progress that would not have been possible as more disparate individuals or groups. What makes us special is our commitment and ability to be inclusive, rigorous, and bold.
You can find out more about Research Connections—and how you can contribute as an editor, reviewer, author, and reader—here.
Chair of the Global Prize Committee and Professor of International History and Politics at the Geneva Graduate Institute
“This year’s pool of submissions was remarkably strong. A large number of manuscripts made genuine contributions to their respective fields and were worthy of serious consideration. The judging process was accordingly tough and energizing. I, for one, learned an enormous deal about themes as diverse as Caribbean environments, Vietnamese cities, and Latin American rivers.
“The ECR First Book Prize is invaluable. It doesn’t just recognize excellent books, but helps launch them.”
Rhea Realo, Head of Digital Product at OUP ANZ, said:
“Oxford Digital brings together proven education research, recognized accessibility standards, and ongoing feedback from teachers. Being named a finalist on the global stage is a strong endorsement of the practical, inclusive learning experience we’ve worked with educators to create.”
The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) is a historical dictionary, containing over 500,000 entries and 3.5 million quotations to capture over 1,000 years of English.
Every quarter, we update the OED by revising versions of existing entries as well as defining new words and senses. These updates subtly broaden our understanding of the English language and its use around the world.
10 highlights from this quarter’s update
1. We added more than 400 new words, phrases, and senses to the OED this quarter, including hot yoga, fantabulosa, will-they-won’t-they, and auto-reply.
2. By happy coincidence this update lands just before International Coffee Day (1 October). Coffee drinks new to the OED include Café Cubano, café con leche, cafezinho, and cold brew.
3. This release sees additions from across the world, including contributions from East Africa, Caribbean, Bermuda, New Zealand, Wales, and the Isle of Man. Learn more from Executive Editor, Danica Salazar.
4. From shadeesh to hamma, we welcome several Bermudian English additions, as part of a valuable new collaboration with the Bermuda Spelling Bee. This is an annual spelling competition for 9- to 13-year-olds designed to foster a love of language and learning among young Bermudians.
5. Several new words for supernatural creatures appear in this update. From Welsh folklore we have a bwbach, from Caribbean folklore a jablesse, and we also have the Trinbagonian addition of douen.
6. An important feature of the OED’s New Words team’s work is its Monitor Lexicography (MonLex) programme. This is our way of monitoring, collecting, and prioritizing contemporary language for inclusion in the OED, looking at sources including trending words on language corpora, social media, material generated by our reading programmes, and suggestions made by colleagues on our own internal database. Every other quarter we gather the items collected and assess them for inclusion, prioritizing so that we include the most relevant and important.
Some new words added this quarter from our MonLex programme include: the social media sense of timeline, the sense of slammed meaning very busy or overcome with work, the chiefly North American English word bothsidesism, and lastly, overnight oats.
7. Craig Leyland, Executive Editor, notes the welcome of two reference related words – thesaural and mountweazel. The latter is defined as ‘an invented or fake entry in a reference work (esp. a dictionary or an encyclopedia), a database, etc., typically used by the publisher to identify plagiarism that constitutes an infringement of copyright’. Does the OED contain any mountweazels? We can’t say, of course. You can read more from Craig about both here.
8. More than 700 entries have been revised as part of this update, including ‘gym’ and ‘kanaka’ words. Read more in this commentary from Andrew Ball, OED Editor.
9. The words newly revised this quarter show an especially rich variety of etymologies. In the month that the Bayeux Tapestry goes on view in London, it is fitting that we have a healthy crop of Middle English borrowings from French, or more specifically Anglo-Norman (i.e. French as used in medieval Britain), including doubt, equity, fantasy, and garner. Read more from Philip Durkin, OED Deputy Chief Editor.
10. And finally, being asked about ‘scone’ usually raises a groan for pronunciation editors, but it was good to have the opportunity to provide the ‘skoon’ pronunciation appropriate for the Stone of Scone in this update. Hear more from Catherine Sangster, OED Pronunciation Editor.
Explore the update in more depth here.
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