Assistant Editor: Edinburgh University Press

Assistant Editor: Edinburgh University Press

Posted on: 6th November, 2025. Closing date: 17th November, 2025

Apply by Monday 17 November for this full-time, permanent role based in Edinburgh.

Edinburgh University Press is a thriving academic publisher, producing 330 new books and 59 new journals each year, with an emphasis on the Humanities and Social Sciences.

They are looking for an Assistant Editor to join the team at their Edinburgh office on a full time, permanent contract. Reporting to the Commissioning Editor for Linguistics and Law, you will be responsible for providing the editorial support for the relevant commissioning teams and acting as the first point of day-to-day editorial contact with authors, editors and contributors from contract stage.

Key Accountabilities

• Editorial support
• Editorial admin
• Service excellence and continuous improvement

Key Activities

• Act as the first point of day-to-day editorial contact with authors, editors and contributors from contract stage
• Support the peer review process
• Prepare author, editor, contributor and series editor contracts and seek Commissioning Editor approval
• Ensure contracts are processed in a timely manner
• Manage the publication schedule and maintain accurate records
• Liaise with authors on a regular basis to track manuscript progress, word lengths, and their progress with obtaining and clearing permissions for any illustrations
• Oversee receipt of manuscripts from authors
• Oversee the handover of manuscripts to production in a timely manner in order to meet scheduled publication dates
• Manage the paperback publication schedules
• Behave in accordance with EUP’s culture and values
• Actively foster team-working, both within editorial and across departments, to ensure effective communication, and to achieve organisational aims and unity.

EUP’s culture is based on the principles of creativity, communication and community, reflecting their values of aspiration, responsibility and collaboration. EUP place an emphasis on the care and respect with which they treat all stakeholders, including their authors, editors, customers and colleagues. They believe that working together as a team will give them the best chance of achieving their vision for EUP: connecting people and ideas to inspire critical creative thinking, offer new perspectives and shape the world we live in.

EUP are committed to supporting the well-being of their staff, offering two wellness days per year and flexible working options. They place an emphasis on learning and development, which includes a personal development budget for each member of staff, and time set aside for four reading days per year.

Person Specification

• Highly organized, flexible and digitally literate
• Excellent communication skills, written and oral
• Interest in academic publishing
• Ability to work on own initiative
• Able to juggle multiple demands and work to deadlines
• Good working knowledge of Microsoft Office (Excel, Word, PowerPoint)
• Experience of working in an administrative role
• Experience of working in a team
• Good numeric skills and excellent attention to detail
• Basic knowledge of the editorial publishing process
• Ability to work with others and open to change
• Highly motivated, enthusiastic and conscientious
• A positive approach to problem solving
• Growth mindset
• Outward looking, customer-needs focus

Contract: 35 hours per week, permanent

Location: Edinburgh office (with option for days from home)

To apply

please send a full CV and covering letter to Caroline (as above), specifying where you found this advert. EUP would like you to specifically include a paragraph, of no more than 500 words, addressing the following questions:

• What interests you about working in publishing?
• Why do you want to work for Edinburgh University Press?

EUP is committed to the values of equity, diversity, inclusion and accessibility and encourages applications from a diverse range of backgrounds. They ask that all candidates complete this short, optional, anonymous equal opportunities monitoring survey*.

The survey is optional and completely anonymous. Completing it will help EUP towards their aims of equity and inclusion.