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Digital Publishing Specialist

Academic Professional

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Position Available: This position is available as soon as possible and may be eligible for a hybrid work schedule. For more information, consult the Library’s Guidelines and Workflows . This is a 100%-time, permanent, twelve-month appointment Academic Professional position in the University Library.

Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Accessibility Statement: The University Library of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign values diversity of thought, perspective, experience, and people, and is actively committed to a culture of inclusion and respect. We are dedicated to the practices of social justice, diversity, and equality, and we strive to overcome historical and divisive biases in our society and embrace diverse points of view as assets to the fabric of our community. All positions will be called on to contribute to building this environment in the Library and throughout the campus community, and we encourage candidates who share these values to apply. Additional information can be found on the Library’s DEIA webpage: https://www.library.illinois.edu/geninfo/deia/

Responsibilities: Reporting to the Head of Scholarly Communication and Publishing, the Digital Publishing Specialist will manage editorial and production workflows including those related to publication metadata, digital archiving, and document transformation. The incumbent will act as part of the Library’s effort to offer high quality, open access publishing services to the Urbana-Champaign campus and beyond through the Illinois Open Publishing Network (https://iopn.library.illinois.edu/) and related scholarly communication efforts. This position, as time allows, will contribute to related scholarly research metadata initiatives. Specific responsibilities include:

Editorial Processes and Policies:

• Manage the publication process for authors of long-form publications;
• Collaborate with colleagues in Scholarly Communication and Publishing to develop documentation, policies, and to scope publishing services;
• Establish and manage internal communications and communication with freelancers for the launch of new digital publications;
• Improve and document editorial workflows and processes, and author procedures for preparing and loading content into digital publishing platforms;
• Work with journal editors to maintain best practices, comply with indexing standards, and improve workflows;
• Provide occasional training and supervision of other unit staff on production processes;

Digital Production, Metadata, and Preservation:

• Ensure the feasibility of digital publications in preparation for final online publication, including adherence to metadata and accessibility best practices; reviewing copyright issues with multimedia; formatting of text documents; proofreading for obvious structural, grammatical, or stylistic errors; and conversion to additional formats;
• Edit and create structured documents and web sites for publication using HTML, XML, and CSS templates;
• Consult with authors to teach best practices related to publishing systems and answer related questions;
• Create, manage, and ensure quality of metadata related to digital publications, including metadata related to rights and accessibility;
• Create and manage digital preservation and web archiving workflows for publications after their release;
• Compile and maintain information from authors and editors related to rights and permissions for content reused in publications;
• Evaluate feasibility of emerging formats and workflows for digital publishing to guide integration into the Library’s evolving scholarly publishing toolkit;
• As time allows, contribute to metadata workflows for related scholarly communication efforts.

Research:

• Contribute to research and development to improve reader use of digital publications and platforms.
• In collaboration with colleagues, perform periodic environmental scans and evaluation of digital publishing activities and platforms, including creation of reports and whitepapers;
• Stay up-to-date on standards, best practices, and emerging tools related to copyright law and licensing issues; open publication; and technical workflows related to scholarly publishing and metadata efforts.

Academic Professional employees are encouraged to use “investigation time” to pursue areas of interest, not directly in support of an immediate program need, in accordance with the University Library’s policy on Investigation Time for Academic Professional Employees . Some investigations originating in this manner may evolve into regular work assignments or production activities.

Required Qualifications:

• Master’s degree or higher in a humanities or social sciences field such as literature, writing studies, history, communication, media studies, library and/or information sciences, or digital humanities, or a similar area;
• Familiarity with web technologies including HTML, CSS, and content management systems (e.g. Wordpress, Drupal);
• Experience planning, prioritizing, and executing tasks to achieve goals in a set timeframe;
• Experience and comfort with troubleshooting and learning digital technologies;
• Demonstration of strong organizational skills and attention to detail;
• Strong communication skills, with an emphasis on excellent written communication and an ability to explain technical information to a non- technical audience;
• Demonstrated ability to work both independently and collaboratively within a diverse community;

Desired Qualifications:

• Familiarity with scholarly publication review workflows;
• Experience with creating and maintaining documentation;
• Experience with markup languages, document modelling, and/or establishing data conversion and cleanup workflows;
• Understanding of web accessibility issues and best practices;
• Experience with proofreading and copy editing;
• Familiarity with digital production software such as Calibre and InDesign;
• Familiarity with scholarly metadata creation best practices.

Appointment Information

Environment: The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) Library is a leader in the delivery of user services, and active programs in information, instructional, access, and scholarly services which help the Library to maintain its place at the intellectual heart of the campus. The Library also holds one of the preeminent research collections in the world, encompassing more than 13 million volumes and a total of more than 23 million items. The Library is committed to maintaining the strongest collections and service programs possible, and to engaging in research, development, and scholarly practice - all of which support the University's missions of teaching, research, and public engagement. The Library employs approximately 90 faculty members, and more than 300 academic professionals, staff, and graduate assistants. For more information, see: http://www.library.illinois.edu/.

The scope of the Scholarly Communication and Publishing unit of the library includes digital publishing, repository services (including the library’s institutional repository, IDEALS), copyright, researcher information management systems (RIMS), scholarly communication, and digital humanities, with increasing work on open educational resources (OER). The library’s press, IOPN, is a partner on the Mellon-funded AFRO Publishing Without Walls (AFRO PWW 2) grant to expand capacity for digital publishing in the field of Black Studies. The Scholarly Communication and Publishing Unit synthesizes a wide range of expertise in both traditional and non-traditional areas of library practice associated with every aspect of the scholarly communication cycle, including consultations in the preparation of scholarly articles and other outputs, consultations related to intellectual property and copyright, digital archiving of intermediate-stage scholarly work, compliance with Open Access mandates and policies, promotion of open educational resources, and establishment and maintenance of new publishing platforms and publication workflow processes for direct Open Access publishing of final-stage scholarship.

Salary and rank: Minimum starting salary for academic professional positions in the Library is $55,000 and is commensurate with credentials and experience. The University of Illinois Library is committed to competitive salaries and attending to equity in compensation within the organization.

Terms of Appointment: Twelve-month appointment; 24 annual vacation days; 12 annual paid holidays; 12 annual sick-leave days (cumulative), plus an additional 13 sick-leave days (non-cumulative) available, if needed, each year; health insurance requiring a small co-payment is provided to employee (with the option to purchase coverage for spouse and dependents); required participation in State Universities Retirement System (SURS) (8% of annual salary is withheld and is refundable upon termination), with several options for participation in additional retirement plans; newly-hired employees are covered by the Medicare portion of Social Security and are subject to its deduction.

Campus and Community: The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is a comprehensive and major public land-grant university (Doctoral/Research University-Extensive) that is ranked among the best in the world. Chartered in 1867, it provides undergraduate and graduate education in more than 150 fields of study, conducts theoretical and applied research, and provides public service to the state and the nation. It employs 2,765 faculty members who serve 33,000 undergraduates and 15,000 graduate and professional students. More information about the campus is available at www.illinois.edu.

The University is located in the twin cities of Champaign and Urbana, which have a combined population of 126,638 and are situated about 140 miles south of Chicago, 125 miles west of Indianapolis, and 180 northeast of St. Louis. The University and its surrounding communities offer a cultural and recreational environment ideally suited to the work of a major research institution. For more information about the community, visit: https://illinois.edu or https://www.champaigncounty.org.

Application Procedures & Deadline Information

Apply for this position using the Apply Now button at the top or bottom of this posting. To ensure full consideration, all required application materials must be received by 6:00pm (CST) on June 2, 2023. Please create your candidate profile, upload a cover letter, your curriculum vitae, and the names and email addresses of four professional references by the close date. Applications not submitted through https://jobs.illinois.edu will not be considered.

For further information about this specific position, please contact 217-333-8169. For questions regarding the application process, please contact 217-333-2137.

The University of Illinois System is an equal opportunity employer, including but not limited to disability and/or veteran status, and complies with all applicable state and federal employment mandates. Please visit Required Employment Notices and Posters to view our non-discrimination statement and find additional information about required background checks, sexual harassment/misconduct disclosures, COVID-19 vaccination requirement, and employment eligibility review through E-Verify.

Applicants with disabilities are encouraged to apply and may request a reasonable accommodation under the Americans with Disabilities Act (2008) to complete the application and/or interview process. Requests may be submitted through the reasonable accommodations portal, or by contacting the Accessibility & Accommodations Division of the Office for Access and Equity at 217-333-0885, or by emailing accessibility@illinois.edu.

Requisition ID: 1017265
Job Category: Research
Apply at: https://jobs.illinois.edu