The Open Book Collective is looking to appoint a Community Engagement Lead to support our outreach with diverse stakeholders, including academic libraries and open access publishers and infrastructure providers. This position is partially supported by the Open Book Futures project, funded by Arcadia and the Research England Development Fund. 

The successful candidate can start from 1st October, or as soon practicable thereafter, with the position initially funded as a two year fixed term position, with the potential of renewal thereafter. 

We are looking for someone to support engagement work both in person and remotely in UK/EU locations/time zones. 

Closing date: Sunday August 17th (by 11:59pm, in any timezone).

About Open Book Collective 

Open Book Collective launched in 2023. It is a charity that works to bring together open access book publishers, open publishing service providers, and knowledge institutions, including libraries, working in collaboration to secure a more sustainable and equitable future for open access books. A key way it does this, is by raising funds from universities to support open access book publishing and infrastructure development. 

The Open Book Collective is committed to building diverse teams, with people from a range of backgrounds. Equity, inclusion and diversity are core values for us and the communities we support. We strive to ensure that our team reflects these values. 

The Open Book Collective is UK-based organisation, however many colleagues work remotely. 

About the role 

We are looking for an experienced, highly organised, and self-motivated colleague to lead our community engagement activities, who is passionate about the values and mission of the Open Book Collective.  

As the OBC’s Community Engagement Lead, you will take a primary role in our outreach to libraries and library consortia, in order to build support for the Supporter Programmes, which we host on behalf of our members. You will also support our wider community engagement efforts, including to publishers and open infrastructure providers.  

The successful candidate should have excellent organisational, outreach and team working skills and a strong understanding both of the work of scholarly libraries and of what is at stake in the futures of Open Access publishing.  

You will take a leading role in our engagement work with diverse stakeholders. This includes leading outreach meetings and presenting at relevant events. You will engage our communities in your wider advocacy work, including in written outputs. You will also contribute to the ongoing development of OBC’s outreach strategy, as well as helping to input into and refine the processes we use to ensure the continued renewals of Supporter Programmes by our supporters. 

Duties include: 

• Building and sustaining relationships with library supporters, OBC publisher and infrastructure provider members and other stakeholders.

• Generating income for the OBC by confirming support from stakeholders for OBC’s subscription offers. 

• Representing the OBC at outreach meetings, conferences, webinars. 

• Working with OBC colleagues to develop OBC outreach and renewals strategies. 

• Publicly advocating for a fairer, more sustainable future for Open Access book publishing.

• Taking a lead in writing a range of outputs, for example from outreach emails to stakeholders, to blog posts, to annual reports.

• Assisting with project administrative duties, including collaborations with the Open Book Futures project Principal Investigator and other Work Package leads.

• Working on other ad hoc tasks relating to OBC’s work, as necessary. 

Essential experience/skills 

• Demonstrable understanding of the changing environment for scholarly communications and open access publishing models.

• Strong organisational skills, including an ability to confidently and collaboratively manage multiple overlapping areas of community outreach and engagement.

• Excellent presentation skills, including a track record of delivering engaging presentations to diverse stakeholders.

• Evidence of an ability to work independently to maintain relationships with stakeholders in a complex and rapidly changing scholarly environment.

• Excellent interpersonal and team working skills, including an ability to work successfully in a collaborative environment with colleagues from culturally diverse backgrounds.

• Evidence (e.g. via existing publications, blog posts, reports) of an ability to write well and confidently for different audiences.