Commissioning Editor

Job Title: Commissioning Editor

Location(s): London - Hybrid Working Model

Closing date: 18th April 2025

About Springer Nature Group

Springer Nature opens the doors to discovery for researchers, educators, clinicians and other professionals. Every day, around the globe, our imprints, books, journals, platforms and technology solutions reach millions of people. For over 180 years our brands and imprints have been a trusted source of knowledge to these communities and today, more than ever, we see it as our responsibility to ensure that fundamental knowledge can be found, verified, understood and used by our communities – enabling them to improve outcomes, make progress, and benefit the generations that follow.

The Springer Nature Journals Group aims to support researchers in communicating and advancing discovery for a better world. We do this by providing a trusted environment in which researchers can quickly, easily and transparently share their discoveries, data and research stories.

The Collections Management and Acquisition Team is a division within the Publishing Performance & Intelligence group providing expertise and dedicated resources to support the growth of commissioned content across the SN Journal portfolio. 

About The Role

The Commissioning Editor is responsible for attracting high-quality content into key Springer Nature journals via the creation of Topical Collections. Increasing commissioned content is an essential part of our strategy to grow our Springer Nature journal portfolios and as such appropriate topic identification is critical.

In this position you will work with our Editorial Board Members, data scientists and analysts to ensure topic selection benefits from being data driven. Similarly, identification of an appropriate Guest Editor is key to a Collection’s success; the Commissioning Editor will reach out to high-level active researchers and encourage them to engage in Topical Collections in Springer Nature journals either as an editor or an author. This is a rare opportunity to join and help shape a new and growing team at a pivotal time.

Responsibilities:

• Overall responsibility for planning and implementing commissioning strategies on key journals
• Define and implement best practices across the Collections lifecycle
• Identify appropriate topics for Collections
• Ascertain and understand trends in market share at the level of specific topics
• Carry out strategic competitor analysis
• Build and leverage relationships with internal and external editorial communities
• Use a wide array of data analysis tools to ensure topic selection is data-driven
• Participate in the development of new technology aimed at solving complex topic modelling problems
• Manage Collections pipeline against ambitious publication targets
• Partner with our journals’ editorial teams so that Collections strategy is congruent with journal development plans and is translated into a consistent flow of opening and closing Collections, whilst ensuring the editorial teams retain ownership of their journals’ content
• Identify and engage with Guest Editors and potential authors by inviting them to edit a Collection or submit their research articles.
• Orchestrate the training of Guest Editors
• Engage with our Marketing teams to coordinate and improve the promotion of our Collections, and develop new ways to reach out to the external communities served by our journals
• Support the team of Managing Editors with overseeing the management of peer review for the Collections’ pipeline

 Experience:

• Sound knowledge and keen interest in Science
• Familiarity with the Research Process and the Scientific community
• Previous commissioning experience within scholarly publishing highly desirable

 Skills/Knowledge:

• An excellent understanding of the research publishing landscape and how journals and journal publishers serve the research community.
• Strong data analysis and reporting skills – ability to directly query data is desirable
• Practical awareness of the importance and key aspects of research ethics and open access publishing
• Excellent presentational skills
• Excellent communication skills – both written and verbal.
• Good interpersonal skills and the ability to communicate effectively with a
• A creative mindset and the ability to bring energy, ideas and new approaches
• A strategic and commercial mindset, with experience in developing and implementing plans.
• Ability to adapt quickly to change, juggle a varied workload under pressure and work quickly and efficiently on own initiative as well as part of a team

Qualifications:

• Bachelor's Degree, preferably in a STEM discipline

This role is based in our London King's Cross office on a hybrid working basis with 2 days a week in the office required.

At Springer Nature, we’re committed to creating a great working environment which includes the benefits you receive, opportunities for you to develop your skills and ways to get to know your colleagues.

Some of these include:

Support networks that focus on fostering dialogue around diversity, community building, advice and advocacy Wellbeing initiatives to support in maintaining a healthy work life balance

• 24-hour access to our learning and development platform LEAP and LinkedIn Learning to help develop your skills
• A fantastic benefits package

Further information about life at Springer Nature, hybrid working and the range of benefits available will be shared during the interview process.

Applicants should send:

• A cover letter that conveys their interest and motivation for the role and indicates salary expectations,

• A CV (which should include a brief account of the applicant’s research accomplishments and of other relevant experience)

Candidates will be considered on an on-going basis. Early applications are encouraged.

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