Open Access and Scholarly Communications (OASC) Librarian, NJIT
Tuesday, November 21, 2023 10:45 AM

Position Summary: The Robert W. Van Houten Library at New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) seeks a collaborative, curious, and detail-oriented Open Access and Scholarly Communications (OASC) Librarian to lead the open access, data management, open educational resources, and scholarly communication programs and related strategic initiatives.

This is a 12-month professional staff position and works under the direction of the University Librarian. The successful candidate will incorporate resilience, resourcefulness, and solutions orientation to manage time and deadlines, as well as balance demands and priorities.

The position typically works a 35-hour work week with one remote workday and may require occasional evening and weekend hours based on instructional needs.

Essential Functions:

  • Open Access and Scholarly Communication Services (85%)
  • Assists faculty, researchers, and students in navigating a complex and challenging publishing environment (predatory publishers, open access, APCs, copyright and fairuse, and creative commons licensing).
  • Provides individual and group consultation in guiding open access, author's rights, and other related publishing models.
  • Supports researchers and liaison librarians on ORCID, fair use, journal, and funder open access policies.
  • Provides support for compliance with funders' data management plan and sharing policy mandates.
  • Supports data curation and management, including technical challenges such as format migration, preservation, metadata, and data retrieval and use.
  • Works collaboratively with subject liaison librarians and other units on campus to develop, promote, and support various programming for open access, data management, open educational resources, and scholarly communications.
  • Partners with the Student Success Librarian to collaborate and manage the Open &Affordable Textbook (OAT) program by assisting in discovering, adapting, creating, and using OER content.
  • Collaborates with the Electronic Resources and Discovery Librarian to a) assess open-access publisher's read-and-publish offers, b) analyze author metrics and trends related to open access offers, c) develop guidelines and policies for evaluating successful open-access transformative partnerships, and d) assess open-access partnerships to inform future planning.
  • Collaborates with the Archivist and Digital Initiatives Librarian to co-manage the institutional repository using metadata best practices to improve discoverability and ensure documents comply with accessibility standards and link to supplement materials in data repositories.
  • Monitors the scholarly communication landscape, including legislative, funding, and publishing trends. Assesses findings, communicates implications where appropriate, and incorporates them into existing programming.
  • Serves on library, faculty, and university-wide committees. Subject Liaison, Instruction, and Outreach Services (15%)
  • Serves as the subject liaison librarian to a STEM academic department as assigned.
  • Contributes to on-call shifts during work schedule to answer questions in person, via chat, phone, and email.
  • Creates and maintains research guides and instructional materials for the assigned subject.
  • Participates in outreach and engagement to promote library resources and services.

Additional Functions:

  • Performs other duties as assigned.

Prerequisite Qualifications:

  • An ALA-accredited Master’s degree in library information science or related field.
  • Three (3) years of relevant professional library experience supporting open access, scholarly communications, open educational resources, or research data services.
  • Demonstrated knowledge of issues, trends, and technologies related to academic research, OER, scholarly communication practices, and research data management.
  • Demonstrated excellent communication, interpersonal, and project management skills.
  • Strong analytical problem-solving skills and developing creative solutions.
  • At the university’s discretion, formal education and experience prerequisites may be accepted if the candidate can demonstrate an equivalent combination of education and experience to the satisfaction of the university, specifically preparing the candidate for success in the position.

Preferred Qualifications

  • A second Master’s degree in a STEM discipline.
  • Training/certification with data management workflows and research impact metrics.
  • Experience providing instruction in data curation tools or services (Figshare, DMPTool,etc..), research profile systems (ORCID, Google Scholar, etc.), and repositories (DigitalCommons).
  • Experience in searching Scopus, PubMed, Web of Science, and other academic databases.
  • Ability to work independently and collaboratively as part of a team.

MLS or Library School Required: Yes

Salary Meets NJLA Minimum:

Job Focus: Academic