Director of Scholarly Publishing

American Astronomical Society (AAS):

The AAS, established in 1899, is a major international organization of professional astronomers, astronomy educators, and amateur astronomers. Its membership of approximately 8,000 also includes physicists, geologists, engineers, and others whose interests lie within the broad spectrum of subjects now comprising astronomical sciences. The mission of the AAS is to enhance and share humanity’s scientific understanding of the universe as a diverse and inclusive astronomical community, which it achieves through publishing, meetings, science advocacy, education and outreach, and training and professional development.

AAS Publishing:

AAS Publishing operates the AAS’s community-owned, peer-reviewed journals, which collectively publish more than 4,000 articles each year from a diverse and international authorship. The AAS’s flagship journals — The Astronomical Journal, The Astrophysical Journal, The Astrophysical Journal Letters, The Astrophysical Journal Supplements, and The Planetary Science Journal — are all open access and consistently feature some of the most-read and most-cited research results in the astronomical sciences. Additional publications from the Society, such as Research Notes of the AAS, The Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society (BAAS), and AAS Nova, provide homes for non-traditional articles and publicize the work in our journals. AAS Publishing also supports community tools like the AAS Astronomy Image Explorer, AAS Worldwide Telescope, the Unified Astronomy Thesaurus, and more.

Responsibilities:                                                                                                                                                 

The Director of Scholarly Publishing is responsible for managing the AAS publishing activities in cooperation with the AAS Editor in Chief (EiC), Publications Committee, AAS Chief Executive Officer (CEO), and AAS Board of Trustees (BOT).  The Society currently publishes the Astrophysical Journal, Astrophysical Journal Letters, Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series, Astronomical Journal, Bulletin of the AAS, Planetary Science Journal, Research Notes of the AAS, and AAS NOVA.  Publishing services are provided by the Institute of Physics Publishing (IOPP), while the peer review process is handled by AAS staff and supported by the EJ Press platform.  Specific duties include:

1. Providing regular synopses and timely updates on production, strategic direction, and the STM competitive landscape to the AAS EiC, CEO, and BOT (including a brief professional opinion summary and highlights of monthly IOPP reports); Providing independent data analysis and checks on the editorial and production pipelines, and promptly raising issues and concerns to the AAS CEO.
2. dentifying, proposing, and leading—in collaboration with AAS EiC, CEO, and others—new initiatives to ensure that AAS Publishing exists in a state of continual self-examination, innovation, and improvement in a competitive environment.
3. Working with journal editors, peer review support staff, journals data scientists, AAS NOVA editor, publishing services vendors, and the astronomy community at large to establish desired workflows and content functionality and communicating these to the publishing services vendors, including leading technological development efforts. Providing oversight for all stages of the publishing process, including serving as the main point of contact between the AAS and all publishing services vendors. Serving as the primary quality control officer for AAS publications, including setting standards and performance criteria for publishing services vendors and assessing vendor performance. Developing formal Requests for Proposals for publishing services. Note that scientific quality is the responsibility of the AAS EiC, not the Director of Publishing.
4. Working with the AAS EiC and the AAS CFO to gather, organize, and analyze data related to AAS Publishing business models, rates, and author fees.  Assisting the AAS EiC in deploying AAS Publishing development funds. Leading “tiger team” assessments of vendor development efforts. Leading execution of AAS Publishing development efforts. Serving as the main AAS overseer of AAS-led astronomy community initiatives such as the Unified Astronomy Thesaurus, AASTeX, Asclepias, and Astronomy Image Explorer. 
5. Developing and overseeing AAS Publishing tutorials, splinter sessions, webinars for AAS science meetings or stand-alone. Coordinating necessary meeting logistics with relevant AAS office staff.
6. Serving—in collaboration with the EiC—as the main non-editorial representative for the AAS publishing efforts to the scholarly publishing, library, and professional scientific communities; including attending appropriate meetings and conferences as necessary; when necessary, serving as the AAS representative at relevant publishing committees.
7. Coordinating with AAS Director of Communications & Marketing and IOPP a comprehensive outreach and communication program for AAS Publishing; Overseeing ongoing maintenance of AAS Publishing websites and landing pages.
8. Overseeing and managing AAS Publishing Program staff including the three Journals Data Scientists and the Editorial Operations Manager (who has two direct reports).