Peer Review Operations Specialist -2 Year FTC

Public Library of Science

6d • $57,000 - $64,000 • Remote

About The Position

This fully remote position is a 2-year fixed-term contract for candidates based in FL, IL, MA, MD, NY, PA, TX, VA. In the US, this is a union represented position as part of the Pacific Media Workers Guild, Local 39521 of the NewsGuild-Communication Workers of America. As a Peer Review Operations Specialist, you are a confident and highly organized self-starter, motivated by a culture of continuous improvement. You’re an excellent communicator and a natural team player, with the ability to collaborate effectively across teams and hold yourself accountable for meeting competing deadlines in a fast-paced environment. Reporting to the Peer Review Operations Manager, you work as a member of the Peer Review Operations team to maintain efficient peer review workflows, ensure high vendor performance standards, and uphold excellent contributor experience for authors, editors, and reviewers. You will enforce turnaround time benchmarks for all peer review milestones to protect process integrity and ensure timeliness and quality of publication. You will have high standards of professional conduct in the workplace, and enjoy working with international colleagues from a range of cultures and settings. You will seek out opportunities for continuous quality improvement in department activities and be an effective champion of the PLOS vision, mission, and brand.

Requirements

• Prior experience in peer-reviewed scholarly publishing
• Excellent communication and presentation skills, both written and oral
• Growth mindset with a collaborative, team player mentality
• An ability to maintain a positive and professional customer service attitude
• Able to work constructively with vendors, authors, editors, customers, and colleagues from a range of international settings
• Knowledge of Excel, Word, file types and file conversions
• Able to work under tight deadlines whilst achieving a high standard of quality and accuracy
• Able to set priorities and work independently
• Upholds high standards of professionalism in the workplace
• Embraces change with a positive attitude
• An interest in science and in advancing scientific knowledge
• A university degree or equivalent experience

Nice To Haves

• Knowledge of and expertise with peer review and manuscript management database systems; proficiency with Editorial Manager a plus
• Knowledge of customer relationship management (CRM) software such as Salesforce
• Awareness of and commitment to open science

Responsibilities

• Ensure the timely, efficient peer review of all submissions
• Ensure that queries or concerns escalated by vendors, Customer Care or other PLOS colleagues are addressed and resolved professionally and within required timelines, or escalated appropriately
• Identify and remove barriers to submission, working collaboratively with colleagues across PLOS as required
• Proactively identify workflow inefficiencies, variations or backlogs to diagnose persistent issues
• Ensure that manuscripts meet requirements and follow current policies and procedures
• Troubleshoot persistent manuscript, workflow or system issues, providing expertise and advice, and exercising judgement to resolve the issue or escalate to the Peer Review Operations Manager or other colleagues as appropriate
• Proactively raise data-driven recommendations for continuous journal operations and workflow improvements to the Peer Review Operations Manager
• Ensure standard journal workflows are maintained as established, implementing and adopting process updates when approved by the Peer Review Operations Manager
• Contribute to workflow project and initiate proposals as requested, and undertake operations projects and initiatives as directed by the Peer Review Operations Manager
• Serve as daily liaison with vendor representatives, monitoring quality and timeliness performance against target thresholds and KPIs
• Contribute to other operational research outputs related to PLOS’s mission where required, so that our journal workflows are optimised to encourage scientific openness and transparency

Benefits

• 401k with employer match
• Employee sponsored health, dental and vision insurance (Dental and Vision 100% employer paid)
• Paid Vacation, 11 public holidays and sick leave
• Parental leave
• Birthday and three winter holidays days off
• Short term and long term disability insurance
• 2 days paid time off for volunteering per year
• Fully remote work environment with stipend on joining for home office

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Mid Level
• Education Level: Associate degree