Publication Data Specialist - Library Services - 107590 - Grade 7

Job Description Position Details Library Services Location: University of Birmingham, Edgbaston, Birmingham UK Full time starting salary is normally in the range £36,636 to £46,049 with potential progression once in post to £48,822 Grade: 7 Full Time, Fixed Term contract up to July 2027 Closing date: 8th July 2026 Our offer to you People are at the heart of what we are and do. The University of Birmingham is proud to have been a part of the City of Birmingham and the wider region for over 100 years, and we are equally proud to be recognised as a leading global university. We want to attract talented people from across the city and beyond, support them to succeed, and celebrate their success. We are committed to helping the people who work here to develop through our sector-leading Birmingham Professional programme which provides all professional services staff with development opportunities and the encouragement to reach their full potential. With almost 5,000 professional services jobs in a wide-range of functions in Edgbaston and in our campus in Dubai, there are plenty of opportunities for you to be able to develop your career at the University. We believe there is no such thing as a typical member of staff and that diversity is a source of strength that underpins the exchange of ideas, innovation, and debate. We warmly welcome people from all backgrounds and are committed to fostering an inclusive environment where diversity is at the heart of who and what we are, and how we work. Supporting our people to achieve a healthy work/life balance is important both to our employees and to the success of the University and, depending on the role, we offer a variety of flexible working arrangements. We therefore welcome discussions on all forms of flexible working. In addition, you will receive a generous package of benefits including 40 days paid holiday a year, one paid day a year for volunteering, occupational sick pay, and a pension scheme. We also have three high quality subsidised day nurseries. The University is situated in leafy Edgbaston and there are excellent transport links to our beautiful campus, including main bus routes and a train station on site. On campus we have a state-of-the-art sports centre with pool, shops, places to eat and drink, our own art gallery, museum and botanical gardens. Find out more about the benefits of working for the University of Birmingham Background The University of Birmingham is a global institution working within a diverse and vibrant City, offering an inspiring education to our students, and undertaking critically important research. We are a place of open, critical thinking, and the creation, sharing and dissemination of knowledge. Professional Services put students at the heart of all they do and enable an exceptional educational experience. They provide outstanding support to our researchers and help the University to grow its influence regionally, nationally, and globally. They ensure the University’s resources are used wisely, manage and improve the infrastructure which sits at the heart of the institution, and support decisions to be made quickly and based on sound evidence. Our Birmingham Professional programme operates across the University, supporting colleagues to network and collaborate, offering opportunities to learn and develop, contributing to the delivery of the University’s objectives, and helping everyone to understand the broader context within which we work. Libraries and Learning Resources supports the information resource and service needs of staff and students undertaking high quality research, learning, and teaching at the University of Birmingham. Including the main library on the Edgbaston campus, the service operates from several site libraries across the campus and in the West Midlands region, supports the delivery of library services at the University’s Dubai campus, and delivers access to information resources and library services to distance learners and transnational users. The Collections, Discovery and Research Communications Division, within Libraries and Learning Resources, manages the acquisition of and access to a substantial collection of information resources in a range of different formats. A significant and growing proportion of that collection is delivered electronically with access and use of the content controlled by licence agreements. As part of that division, Scholarly Communications Services are responsible for managing the ingest, description, discoverability, accessibility and long-term preservation of a range of research outputs across a suite of open repositories, including published outputs, data and theses. The team also manages expenditure of the University’s centralised open access funds and provides a range of services to support staff and student’s open research practice. The Publications Data Specialist will be managed directly by the Head of Scholarly Communications Services, but will also work closely with other Heads of Service responsible for Research Skills and Collection Development as well as the lead on an ongoing Open Research Services Roadmap project. Role Summary Libraries and Learning Resources invests a significant amount of its operational budget, block grant funding, as well as staffing into open access publishing. There is growing demand on the department to produce data regarding open access, to support the University’s strategic aims, including Research Excellence Framework (REF) performance, funder compliance and league table aspirations. Good quality data underpins our ability to ensure that funding and staffing decisions are evidence-based, aligned with university strategy, meet the requirements of funders and provide value for money. The Publication Data Specialist is an expert technical role designed to deliver a project that will transform how the University gathers, analyses, and reports on open access publishing data. The postholder will assess the complex data requirements of research leads and other stakeholders and implement automated workflows to harvest data from disparate internal and external services. By building and documenting a real-time open access and publishing data dashboard, existing manual processes will be replaced by efficient streamlined technical solutions. The postholder will also act as a technical leader by auditing relevant staff skills and delivering training to develop the technical capability of the wider team, ensuring the long-term sustainability of the dashboard. Main Duties • Assess open access and other publication data requirements by actively collaborating with senior Library staff and research leads to understand and interpret their needs. • Evaluate and recommend the most effective internal and external data sources, including combining local spend data with internal and external bibliometric services (such as Pure, Scopus, SciVal, and OpenAlex). • Design, test, and implement automated data harvesting mechanisms, writing code and utilising Application Programming Interfaces (APIs), to extract and combine complex datasets. • Build, launch, and fully document a real-time open access data dashboard to automate data gathering and cleansing, providing continuous reporting against key strategic requirements. • Conduct a technical skills audit within Libraries and Learning Resources and design targeted training to upskill relevant staff, ensuring they can support and develop the dashboard in the future. • Provide specialist, evidence-based advice, including data visualisations, to senior stakeholders to support decision-making regarding open access agreements, initiatives, and Article Processing Charges (APCs). • Scope and plan requirements for potential future data initiatives, such as building tools to monitor research data management compliance and long-form publishing metrics. • Foster a fair and equitable workplace for all staff. • Support the University’s sustainability agenda through resource efficient working. • Any other duties commensurate with the grade. Required Knowledge, Skills, Qualifications, Experience • Educated to Degree level (or equivalent qualifications) or relevant technical qualification and considerable relevant experience. Where no equivalent qualification is held, significant practical relevant experience and expertise in a series of more demanding roles will be required, demonstrating the conceptual understanding required. • In-depth up to date specialist understanding and experience in data analysis, data visualisation, and automated data extraction. • Competency and practical experience in a relevant coding or scripting language (e.g., Python, R, or similar) specifically for querying APIs, data manipulation, and automation. • Proven ability to extract, cleanse, and analyse complex datasets from a variety of systems. • Excellent communication skills, with the ability to interpret the technical requirements of diverse stakeholders and summarise complex data for non-specialist audiences. • Ability to manage projects effectively, prioritising multiple technical initiatives concurrently over short and long timescales. • Experience in coaching, mentoring, or delivering training to develop the technical capability of colleagues. • Excellent standard of literacy and numeracy. • Knowledge of the protected characteristics and duties under the Equality Act 2010. Including fostering good relations and advancing the universities Public Sector Equality Duty (PSED). • An understanding of the open access and academic publishing landscape, alongside experience working with bibliographic data. While highly advantageous, this is not strictly essential and candidates with strong technical data skills from other sectors are encouraged to apply Informal enquiries to Michael Dainton, email: m.dainton@bham.ac.uk View our staff values and behaviours here Use of AI in applications: We want to understand your genuine interest in the role and for the written elements of your application to accurately reflect your own communication style. Applications that rely too heavily on AI tools can appear generic and lack the detail we need to assess your skills and experience. Such applications will unlikely be progressed to interview. We believe there is no such thing as a 'typical' member of University of Birmingham staff and that diversity in its many forms is a strength that underpins the exchange of ideas, innovation and debate at the heart of University life. We are committed to proactively addressing the barriers experienced by some groups in our community and are proud to hold Athena SWAN, Race Equality Charter and Disability Confident accreditations. We have an Equality Diversity and Inclusion Centre that focuses on continuously improving the University as a fair and inclusive place to work where everyone has the opportunity to succeed. We are also committed to sustainability, which is a key part of our strategy. You can find out more about our work to create a fairer university for everyone on our website .