Is it a 'bad idea' to include gratuitous pictures of cleavage on an Oxford Journals website?
In a word, 'yes'.
2015-02-16: Note that this story has been updated after Oxford Journals contacted me about this (see end of post).
I know that journals need to make money, but it seems a bit shoddy when they allow any form of advertising to appear on their websites. Came across an article at Nucleic Acids Research today which featured the following advert:
Given that I have published in this journal before, I suppose that people reading our articles will also have a chance of seeing ads like this. I would ask Oxford Journals to think carefully about whether they really want adverts like this appearing on their site. This doesn't seem a particularly good fit for them as a scientific publisher — for that matter, it doesn't seem a great fit for for the advertiser either.
Update: Oxford Journals reached out to me on twitter with some good news:
@kbradnam Thank you for letting us know. The advertiser has been removed from our list of online ads.
— Oxford Journals (@OxfordJournals) February 16, 2015