Publishing Operations Content Specialist

Role Summary

PLOS is a nonprofit, Open Access publisher empowering researchers to accelerate progress in science and medicine by leading a transformation in research communication. As the Publishing Operations Content Specialist, you are a key member of the Publishing Operations team at PLOS, responsible for providing oversight of the content publication process post-acceptance.  They will review, implement and adjust the production schedule as necessary, follow up with various departments to ensure established production targets, monitor performance reports, and communicate with vendors to ensure quality.  

This person is the day-to-day point of contact for PLOS journals, and they work to ensure submissions are production-ready and published in a timely manner. This position plays a pivotal role in producing published content, ensuring high quality deliverables, monitoring vendor performance, and advancing mission-inspired goals. 

Responsibilities 

Content Management 

• Ensure the timely, efficient production and publication of accepted content  
• Identifyand remove barriers to publication.  
• Troubleshoot persistent research output or system issues and exercise judgment to escalate to the Senior Production Operations Manager. 
• Ensure standard production workflows are maintained and well documented as established 
• Implement, recommend improvement sand adopt process updates when approved by the Senior Production Operations Manager 

Query Management 

• Execute and confirm completion of corrections and other updates to research outputs pre and post publication. 
• Ensure that manuscripts and other research outputs meet requirements and follow current policies and procedures. 
• Respond to production-related queries from contributors, internal and external stakeholders.

General  

• Proactively identify standard-workflow deviations, disruptions, or backlogs to diagnose persistent production issues or process inefficiencies.  
• Proactively raise data-driven recommendations for continuous production operations and workflow improvements to the Production team leadership.  
• Contribute to workflow project proposals as requested, and undertake operations projects as directed by the Senior Production Operations Manager  
• Stay abreast of industry best practices.  
• Work closely with other PLOS departments to ensure common goals are achieved, deadlines and deliverables are on track, and issues are resolved collaboratively.

Vendor Management 

• Serve as daily liaison with vendor representatives, monitoring quality and timeliness performance against target thresholds and KPIs.

Knowledge and Skills

• Experience in peer-reviewed scholarly publishing 
• Experience of direct-to-XML-based publishing methods with the ability to troubleshoot issues with publishing staff and composition vendor.  
• Strong working knowledge of production workflow management systems, publishing and/or graphics arts procedures and related computer software and electronic communications tools. 
• Project management skills a plus 
• Excellent communication and presentation skills, both written and oral  
• Highly organized, detail oriented, and proactive in solving problems. 
• Work sunder tight deadlines while achieving a high standard of quality and accuracy.  
• Sets priorities and work independently.  
• Has a growth mindset. 
• Has a collaborative, team player mentality with internal staff and external vendors, and authors  
• Working knowledge of Excel, Word, file types and file conversions
• Knowledge of and expertise with archival and syndication workflows is a plus. 

  Qualifications  

• A university degree or equivalent experience 

Physical Requirements and Work Environment

• Prolonged periods stationary at a desk and working on a computer
• Some national and international travel may/will be required
• Some flexibility to work across time zones 

The base salary range we’ve established for this position is (US) $26.44-$36.06 per hour, (UK) £27,000- £36,800.  The final salary will depend on several factors, including the candidate’s relevant work experience, skills, education, and other qualifications; the region in which the candidate resides, and internal pay equity with current PLOS employees in similar jobs. PLOS also offers a comprehensive benefits package that will be shared with candidates in the interview process.