Calling Volunteers for Joint Career Progression Task Force

The Society for Scholarly Publishing (SSP) and the Association of University Presses (AUPresses) have established a joint task force to create a scholarly publishing position reference directory – a first of its kind reference that charts position descriptions and career paths across the industry.

The project stems from a shared recognition that publishing professionals from learned societies, universities, and other mission-driven organizations often occupy two different employment spheres.

We are looking to recruit 6-10 members who would like to work on this task force to solicit and analyze position descriptions from self-identified publishing professionals across the industry to uncover typical themes, titles, and responsibilities.

Members from both organizations will create a structured list of publishing positions located in organizations big and small. Position descriptions gathered from SSP and AUPresses communities will be analyzed for core responsibilities and the skills required to accomplish them.

The task force is expected to last approximately 12 months, with quarterly meetings as needed. Over the course of a year, the task force will aggregate and analyze a corpus of positions to seek to define common roles and responsibilities. 

We are looking for a wide variety of backgrounds and experience levels across scholarly publishing to round out this task force. No experience is necessary, however, desirable skills include a familiarity with content analysis, human resources, survey research, or an interest in identifying career paths in scholarly publishing. 

Interested volunteers should email Jacklyn Lord, SSP’s Marketing and Operations Manager, with any questions. 

At the conclusion of the task force, SSP and AUPresses will identify typical responsibilities associated with various job roles, the skills needed to acquire a particular position, and then advance within it through the publication of an HR-informed structure for presenting both individual position descriptions and the entire corpus of descriptions in a way that will be useful for both employers and employees.

Interested SSP members are invited to apply by March 28.