Associate Peer Review Operations Specialist Remote-UK

This position is fully remote/home based. Applications will be accepted from candidates based in the UK and the following US states: AZ, CA, FL, IL, MA, MD, NY, PA, TX, VA, WA. PLOS is a non-profit organization on a mission to drive open science forward with measurable, meaningful change in research publishing, policy, and practice. We believe in a better future where science is open to all, for all.

Role Summary

The Associate Peer Review Operations Specialist is a confident and highly organized self-starter, motivated by a culture of continuous improvement. This role requires excellent communication skills, teamwork, and collaboration across teams with accountability to meet competing deadlines in a dynamic environment. Reporting to the Peer Review Operations Managers, this role will work as part of the Peer Review Operations team to maintain efficient peer review workflows, ensure high vendor performance standards, and uphold an excellent contributor experience for authors, editors, and reviewers. This role will enforce turnaround time benchmarks for all peer review milestones to protect process integrity and ensure timeliness and quality of publication. This role will maintain high standards of professional conduct in the workplace and enjoy working with international colleagues from a range of cultures and settings. This role will seek out opportunities for continuous quality improvement in department activities and be an effective champion of the PLOS vision, mission, and brand.

Responsibilities

• Submission Management: 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.
• Workflows: Troubleshoot persistent manuscript, workflow, or system issues, providing expertise and advice, and exercising judgment 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.
• Projects: Contribute to workflow projects 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.
• Other: Contribute to other operational research outputs related to PLOS’s mission where required, so that our journal workflows are optimized to encourage scientific openness and transparency.

Knowledge and Skills

• Excellent communication and presentation skills, both written and oral.
• Highly organized, detail-oriented, and proactive in solving problems.
• 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.

Candidates who have the following skills and experience will be considered for the more senior Peer Review Operations Specialist role. However, those without experience in scholarly publishing are still encouraged to apply and will be considered for an Associate Peer Review Operations Role:

• Prior experience in peer-reviewed scholarly publishing.
• 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.
• A university degree or equivalent experience.

Benefits:

• UK: Private medical insurance. Life assurance. Income protection. Pension with up to 10% employer match. 25 days holidays, market competitive Maternity and Paternity leave. Birthday and three winter holidays days off. 2 days paid time off for volunteering per year. Fully remote work environment with stipend on joining for home office.

About PLOS: Building on a strong legacy of pioneering innovation, PLOS continues to be a catalyst in open science, reimagining models to meet open science principles, removing barriers and promoting inclusion in knowledge creation and sharing, and publishing research outputs that enable everyone to learn from, reuse and build upon scientific knowledge. Our work is supported by a highly skilled global in-house team, partnerships with local scholarly organizations, and the valued contributions of a diverse, international community of scientific researchers. We’re committed to equal opportunity. We’re working to create a more equitable system of scientific knowledge and understanding. Removing barriers to inclusion and facilitating broad participation of voices is core to our success, inside and out. Beyond accepting distinct perspectives, we seek and support divergent backgrounds among our staff because we know differences strengthen our teams, our work, and our communities. We strongly encourage applicants of all identities to join us as we work towards a future where science is open to all, for all.