Job: Research Fellow - COPIM | Centre for Postdigital Cultures, Coventry University

Research Fellow (COPIM), 0.5 FTE (Fixed Term 01-08-2022 until 31-04-2023) Coventry University is seeking to appoint a Research Fellow within the Centre for Postdigital Cultures, Faculty of Arts and Humanities to support the Community-led Open Publication Infrastructures for Monographs (COPIM) project. The Centre for Postdigital Cultures (CPC), builds on the strong and distinctive track-record of scholars at Coventry University encompassing a range of disciplines in the arts and humanities. Led by Professor Gary Hall, the CPC explores how innovations in postdigital cultures can enable 21st century society to respond to the challenges it faces in relation to the digital at a global, national and local level. COPIM is a strategic international partnership led by the Centre for Postdigital Cultures consisting of world-class universities, presses, libraries and infrastructure providers. The project addresses the key technological, structural, and organisational hurdles—around funding, production, dissemination, discovery, reuse, and archiving—that are standing in the way of the wider adoption and impact of open access (OA) books. COPIM will realign OA book publishing away from competing commercial service providers to a more horizontal and cooperative knowledge-sharing approach. A Research Fellow is required to support the project’s PIs in conducting research on (best practices for) the governance of academic presses and collectively managed infrastructures. We are looking for an Open Access specialist with expert knowledge of academic book publishing processes and current developments in digital publishing. The Research Fellow will conduct research on best practices for governing collaborative community-based book publishing projects of various scales. They will also assist in the creation of a model for the long-term management of consortial library funding programs, including official policies and procedures for self-governance and administrative management of the infrastructure. In addition to that they will assist in the organisation of workshops and events to promote the project’s research and outputs.