Commissioning Editor

About Springer Nature Group

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About the Role

The Springer Nature Journals Group aims to support researchers in communicating and advancing discovery for a better world. We do this by providing a trusted environment in which researchers can quickly, easily and transparently share their discoveries, data and research stories.

The Collections Management and Acquisition Team is a division within the Publishing Performance & Intelligence group providing expertise and dedicated resources to support the growth of commissioned content across the SN Journal portfolio.

The Commissioning Editor is responsible for attracting high-quality content into key Springer Nature Open Access journals via the creation of Topical Collections. Increasing commissioned content is an essential part of our strategy to grow our Open Access portfolio and as such appropriate topic identification is critical. The Commissioning Editor will work with our Editorial Board Members and with our data scientists and analysts to ensure topic selection benefits from being data driven. Similarly, identification of an appropriate Guest Editor is key to a Collection’s success; the Commissioning Editor will reach out to high-level active researchers and encourage them to engage in Topical Collections in Springer Nature journals either as an editor or an author. This is a rare opportunity to join and help shape a new and growing team at a pivotal time.

This role will be in our Berlin or Heidelberg offices on a hybrid working model.

Role Responsibilities:

• Overall responsibility for planning and implementing commissioning strategies on key journals
• Define and implement best practices across the Collections lifecycle
• Identify appropriate topics for Collections
• Ascertain and understand trends in market share at the level of specific topics
• Carry out strategic competitor analysis
• Build and leverage relationships with internal and external editorial communities
• Use a wide array of data analysis tools to ensure topic selection is data-driven
• Participate in the development of new technology aimed at solving complex topic modelling problems
• Manage Collections pipeline against ambitious publication targets
• Partner with our journals’ editorial teams so that Collections strategy is congruent with journal development plans and is translated into a consistent flow of opening and closing Collections, whilst ensuring the editorial teams retain ownership of their journals’ content
• Identify and engage with Guest Editors and potential authors by inviting them to edit a Collection or submit their research articles
• Orchestrate the training of Guest Editors
• Engage with our Marketing teams to coordinate and improve the promotion of our Collections, and develop new ways to reach out to the external communities served by our journals
• Support the team of Managing Editors with overseeing the management of peer review for the Collections’ pipeline

Experience, Skills & Qualifications:

• Bachelor's Degree, preferably in a STEM discipline with a keen interest in Science
• 3 – 4 years’ experience in the publishing industry or science research
• Familiarity with the Research Process and the Scientific community
• An excellent understanding of the research publishing landscape and how journals and journal publishers serve the research community, particularly Open Access journals
• Direct experience of managing a journal or journal portfolio is desirable
• Strong data analysis and reporting skills – ability to directly query data is desirable
• Practical awareness of the importance and key aspects of research ethics
• Excellent presentational skills
• Excellent communication skills – both written and verbal
• Good interpersonal skills and the ability to communicate effectively with a wide range of colleagues and stakeholders
• A creative mindset and the ability to bring energy, ideas and new approaches
• A strategic and commercial mindset, with experience in developing and implementing plans
• Ability to adapt quickly to change, juggle a varied workload under pressure and work quickly and efficiently on own initiative as well as part of a team

At Springer Nature, we value the diversity of our teams and work to build an inclusive culture, where people are treated fairly and can bring their differences to work and thrive. We empower our colleagues and value their diverse perspectives as we strive to attract, nurture and develop the very best talent. Springer Nature was awarded Diversity Team of the Year at the 2022 British Diversity Awards. Find out more about our DEI work here https://group.springernature.com/gp/group/taking-responsibility/diversity-equity-inclusion

If you have any access needs related to disability, neurodivergence or a chronic condition, please contact us so we can make all necessary accommodation.

For more information about career opportunities in Springer Nature please visit https://springernature.wd3.myworkdayjobs.com/SpringerNatureCareers

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