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Peer Review Operations Manager (PROM) - Remote (*US or UK)

• The position is fully remote/home-based. Applicants can be based in, the UK, or selected states in the US only (AZ, CA, CO, FL, GA, IL, KS, MA, MD, MN, NY, OR, PA, TX, VA, VT, WA).

Summary

As a Peer Review Operations Manager, you are a confident and highly organized leader, motivated by a culture of continuous improvement. You’re an excellent communicator and a natural team player, with the ability to collaborate effectively across teams and hold yourself accountable for meeting competing deadlines in a fast-paced environment. You are responsible for the management and development of a small team of Peer Review Operations Specialists and required to collaborate on cross-portfolio and organization-wide projects.
You will report to the Associate Director of Peer Review Operations, and work as part of the Publishing Operations team to maintain consistent and efficient peer review workflows, ensure high vendor performance standards, and uphold excellent contributor experience for authors, editors, and reviewers. You will enforce turnaround time benchmarks for all peer review milestones to protect process integrity and ensure timeliness and quality of publication. You will work with other Peer Review Operations Managers to make data-informed decisions on process improvements as directed by the AD of Peer Review Operations.

Responsibilities
Journal Management

• Manage onshore and offshore resources who are responsible for daily operations, project set up, project closure, training delivery, timesheet approval, and process assurance
• Ensure disciplined peer review processes are efficient and consistently maintained according to established objectives
• Liaise with Editorial leadership to maintain standardized communication and engagement channels, providing procedural updates, operations training, and process support
• Advance active projects across Publishing Operations to improve processes and customer service
• Monitor and analyze journal performance in line with journal portfolio strategy and goals, collaborating with relevant stakeholders to make improvements or implement corrective measures as necessary
• Lead team projects aligned with PLOS mission and department objectives

Teamwork

• Partner with other Peer Review Operations Managers to form ad-hoc task force to lead and execute epic department and cross-department projects
• Solving complex editorial issues on the journal – and offering advice and training to colleagues on other journals
• Ensure coverage for colleagues as necessary
• Fully represent journal(s) on major cross-journal projects

Staff Management

• Define recruitment, professional development, and retention strategies for line staff
• Write appraisals for assigned staff
• Recognize accomplishments and opportunities as appropriate
• Make logistical coverage/staffing decisions and communicate them effectively to the rest of the team to ensure business continuity
• Meet regularly with line staff
• Host teambuilding exercises and activities

General

• Represent PLOS externally (e.g., at conferences, events)
• Reflect the company values and culture in all written and oral communication
• Aware of PLOS’s broader organizational objectives and able to explain to junior staff, as well as external stakeholders, new developments in relation to these objectives
• Aware of, and must work within, the budgetary constraints of activities
• Drives creation of quality initiatives, process change initiatives, and other lean initiatives to enable their functional area to meet and exceed business objectives
• Builds and maintains organizational enthusiasm for the customer experience, while championing and maintaining a customer-centric environment throughout the organization

Qualifications and Experience

• A university degree or equivalent
• Demonstrated scholarly publishing experience
• A proven track record of managing, developing and motivating teams, including experience directly supervising staff
• Experience managing vendors, including overall performance management; development and enforcement of SLAs; contract and financial management
• Strong collaboration skills and ability to achieve consensus
• Excellent communication and presentation skills, both written and oral
• Must be highly organized, detail oriented, and proactive in solving problems.
• Project management skills and a growth mindset
• A collaborative, team player mentality
• An ability to maintain a positive and professional customer service attitude
• A commitment to open access and transforming scholarly communication
• Knowledge of and expertise with peer review and manuscript management database systems; proficiency with Editorial Manager a plus.
• Must be able to work under tight deadlines while achieving a high standard of quality and accuracy
• Must be able to set priorities and work independently.
• Demonstrated effective business communication (written and verbal) and presentation skills
• Must be able to work constructively with vendors, authors, editors, customers, and staff
• Technical proficiencies, knowledge of Excel, Word, file types and file conversions
• Experience with online systems or databases

The base salary range we’ve established for this position is (US) $69,700 to $94,300 (UK) £ 32,725 to £44,275. The final salary will depend on several factors including the candidate’s relevant work experience, skills, education and other qualifications; the region in which the candidate resides, and internal pay equity with current PLOS employees in similar jobs.

The Organization:
PLOS is a non-profit, Open Access publisher empowering researchers to accelerate progress in science and medicine by leading a transformation in research communication. PLOS journals propelled the movement for OA alternatives to subscription journals. We established the first multi-disciplinary publication inclusive of all excellent research regardless of novelty or impact and demonstrated the importance of open data availability. As we continue to lead the way in making research content more open, we need to make it a system that's open for everyone. We are intentionally spreading our roots deeper, globally.
We believe in pushing the boundaries of 'Open' to create a more equitable system of scientific knowledge and understanding—it’s core to who we are, 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’re ever-evolving in our journey for representation and equity, and strongly encourage applicants of diverse identities to apply: you’ll find a group of critical thinkers eager to challenge the status quo and learn with you as we continue breaking barriers to open science.