Update (April 9 2019; original posted April 1 2019): applications for this position have now closed.
We are seeking temporary research assistance (online, remote) for a project to survey biomedical preprint servers for current scholarly practices.
Dr Jamie Kirkham, University of Liverpool and Dr Naomi Penfold, ASAPbio, are leading a research project to survey current scholarly publishing practices by preprint servers for biomedical and health sciences. We are seeking assistance to complete the initial research process, which involves structured online research to identify practices as stated on preprint server websites.
From our experience, it takes approximately two hours to complete the structured online survey for each preprint platform. We are seeking assistance to complete the survey for up to 40 preprint platforms before the end of June (although earlier is preferable). We are open to sharing the task between two people.
The researcher(s) will be compensated for their time through a contractor’s arrangement and with compensation of US$30/hour (up to $2400 for 40 servers), with compensation released to match approved survey submissions (on a schedule to be agreed with the researcher(s)).
The applicant must be:
- Familiar with scholarly publishing, in particular publishing ethics and standards used by journals and preprint servers. We think this task is particularly suitable for someone with a Library and Information Sciences background or experience in scholarly publishing. The researcher must not be associated with any existing preprint server; competing interests must be declared.
- Able to provide their own internet access, computer and workspace. The work will be remote and no resources or compensation other than the financial compensation described above will be provided.
- Legally able to work under a US contractor arrangement; note we welcome international applications!
- Available to complete the work between now and June 30, 2019 at the very latest.
To apply, please email your CV with a cover letter (including a declaration of any competing interests1 and an outline of your availability for this work during April to June) to Naomi Penfold at naomi.penfold@asapbio.org.
We are accepting applications until the position is filled, but we encourage applicants to apply by Sunday April 7, 2019 (11:59pm in the latest timezone) for full consideration. We reserve the right to proceed with applications on a first-come, first-served basis. Selected applicants will be asked to complete a 30-minute online task to be returned no later than Monday April 15, and we may request a short video-conference interview before selecting successful applicant(s). We aim to notify all applicants of decisions as soon as is possible
What will happen with the data? After the initial survey is completed, we will verify information directly with the preprint server or by completing a second round of independent online research. Finalised information will be shared online in a dataset available to the Public Domain (CC-0) and observations will be reported in an academic manuscript. Co-authorship is available to contributing researchers.
1 Here, we are using the description of competing interests as used by Wellcome Open Research (source: https://wellcomeopenresearch.org/about/policies#compint)
“A competing interest may be of non-financial or financial nature. Examples of competing interests include (but are not limited to):
- individuals receiving funding, salary or other forms of payment from an organization, or holding stocks or shares from a company, that might benefit (or lose) financially from the publication of the findings;
- individuals or their funding organization or employer holding (or applying for) related patents;
- official affiliations and memberships with interest groups relating to the content of the publication”