Visiting Digital Publishing Specialist

Description

Position Available: The expected start date is as soon as possible after the closing date. This is a 100%, 3-Year Visiting Academic Professional appointment, with the potential of becoming permanent.

Responsibilities: The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign seeks an innovative and motivated professional to serve in the position of Visiting Digital Publishing Specialist. Reporting to the Head of Scholarly Communications and Publishing, the Digital Publishing Specialist will provide the Library’s Scholarly Communications and Publishing Unit with project management and production workflow support as part of the Library’s effort to offer high quality, open access publishing services to the Urbana-Champaign campus and beyond. The Specialist will also participate in the Andrew W. Mellon-funded “Publishing Without Walls” initiative (https://news.illinois.edu/blog/view/6367/256174).

This position performs document modelling and text-structure cleanup processes along with administering the day-to-day coordination and completion of digital publishing projects. The incumbent will interact with other members of the Scholarly Communication and Publishing team, Library IT, and the Scholarly Communication and Repository Services team, and will, in collaboration with the unit head and the research programmer, troubleshoot and streamline digital publishing production workflows. She or he will also assist in developing new publishing projects.

As a member of the Scholarly Communication and Publishing Unit, the Digital Publishing Specialist will join the broader Library Office of Research, a highly collaborative program that also includes the Scholarly Commons (http://www.library.illinois.edu/sc/), the Research Data Service unit, and a growing researcher metrics program.

Specific Responsibilities Include:

●      Assisting in the definition of project scope and objectives, involving all relevant stakeholders and ensuring technical feasibility.
●      Communicating with publishing partners regarding content and features of online publications.
●      Establishing and managing internal communications for the launch of new digital publications.
●      Evaluating feasibility of emerging formats and workflows for digital publishing to guide integration into the library’s evolving scholarly publishing toolkit.
●      Creating and documenting procedures for preparing and loading content into digital publishing platforms, including conversion of draft-format publications into final format, to ensure consistent practice across unit and library.
●      Converting and preparing materials for online publication, including creation of metadata, formatting of text documents, and running scripts to convert from PDF, InDesign, or Microsoft Word format (among others).
●      Proofreading for obvious structural, grammatical, or stylistic errors.
●      Editing and creating simple web sites for publications using HTML and CSS templates.
●      Assisting in educating authors about the publishing process.
●      Other related duties, as assigned.

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