Closing date: 12:00 UTC, Wednesday 26th March 2025
About DOAJ
DOAJ offers free online access and visibility to the thousands of publishers, journals and authors who produce quality, peer-reviewed, open access content. It is a unique and extensive database of diverse open access journals from around the world, and its content is freely available online for everyone.
We are a global virtual organisation with a small but growing team of members from Europe, Africa, East Asia, and North America. Currently, DOAJ has 13 active Ambassadors who work with local communities within Low- or Middle-Income Countries (LMICs) to raise DOAJ’s profile through local outreach and engagement activities. We are now recruiting Ambassadors for West Africa and Brazil. Proficiency in written and spoken English is a requirement.
About the role
The DOAJ Ambassador role is a volunteer position with the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ). It aims to enhance open access engagement, promote best practices in scholarly publishing, and increase the number of quality peer reviewed, open access scholarly journals from LMICs indexed in DOAJ.
Ambassadors are responsible for outreach activities in a specific region or country to increase awareness and enhance the reputation of open access journals within the region, and to educate and engage the local community on best practices in open access journal publishing and DOAJ through events, workshops, and webinars.
Ambassadors commit to the role for one year at a time, with an estimated time commitment of 5 to 10 hours per month. The ideal candidates for this position believe that research should be inclusive and accessible to everyone, regardless of gender, socioeconomic status, geographic location, ethnicity, or race.
Essential skills, qualifications and knowledge
- Strong communication and networking skills.
- Prior experience in presenting and developing training materials.
- Hold a degree or higher qualification, or demonstrate a strong understanding of how journals are used in teaching and research.
- Be fluent in English, both written and spoken, across all mediums.
- An interest in and basic understanding of the open access landscape in your region
- Be good at time management, self-driven, and demonstrate the energy and initiative to work independently.
- Align with our organisational values.
Desired additional skills, qualifications and knowledge
- Are fluent in other languages in addition to English; we are especially keen to hear from people fluent in Spanish, French, or other languages.
- Have experience or knowledge of the scholarly communication industry outside of Brazil and West Africa.
- Are aware of the issue of predatory publishing and know how to combat it.
- Are able to travel occasionally to industry events.
- Are proficient in collaboration and productivity software, such as Google Workspace, Slack etc.
DOAJ is committed to fostering a diverse and inclusive workplace and is an equal-opportunity employer. We strongly encourage applications from all qualified individuals, regardless of gender, background, or identity.
Start date
We are looking for people to start in the second quarter of 2025.
Diversity
DOAJ is committed to fostering a diverse and inclusive workplace and is an equal-opportunity employer. We strongly encourage applications from all qualified individuals, regardless of gender, background, or identity.
DOAJ is an adopting organisation of the C4DISC Joint Statement of Principles and strives to improve diversity and inclusion in scholarly communications. It is extremely important to DOAJ that these principles are reflected in our organisational structure and that they are acted upon in our day-to-day operations.
Questions
If you have questions about the role described here, about working for DOAJ or the application process, please email Ivonne Lujano: ivonne@doaj.org.
How to apply
Send a covering letter and a copy of your resumé/CV to Ivonne Lujano, DOAJ Community Manager (ivonne@doaj.org), by 12:00 UTC on Wednesday 26th March 2025.
Your cover letter must explain how you meet each of the essential requirements and which of the desirable ones you meet.
