ROR is looking for a data manager to lead metadata curation activities for the registry, including coordinating registry updates and maintenance, working with ROR’s community curation advisors, and developing and implement long-term curation policies and practices. This is an exciting time to join the ROR team and support ROR’s emerging independent, community-based curation model.

The job description and application instructions follow below. Please consider applying or help spread the word to your networks.

ROR Data Manager

The Research Organization Registry (ROR) is a community-led registry of open, sustainable, usable, and unique identifiers for every research organization in the world.

ROR is a cross-organization collaborative led by California Digital Library, Crossref, and DataCite. Each organization provides input on decisions and overall strategy that support the growth and sustainability of ROR by engaging in outreach to funders, potential adopters, and other stakeholders in their respective networks.

The ROR registry includes IDs and metadata for more than 100,000 research organizations. ROR receives regular input from its global community of users and stakeholders about records that should be added to or updated in the registry. ROR also seeks and incorporates input from the broader community about policies and processes for maintaining registry data. ROR has implemented a community-based curation workflow for processing registry feedback and implementing registry updates.

ROR is looking for a data manager to lead metadata curation activities for the registry, including coordinating registry updates and maintenance, working with ROR’s community curation advisors, and developing and implement long-term curation policies and practices.

Responsibilities

(1) Coordinate community-based curation processes

• Triage incoming requests to prepare for community review
• Oversee community review process to make sure requests are reviewed in a timely and accurate manner
• Optimize curation workflow as needed to improve experience for requestors and community curators
• Maintain guidance and documentation for community curators
• Schedule and facilitate regular curator meetings
• Onboard and offboard community curators

(2) Coordinate registry updates

• Maintain regular schedule of registry updates
• Identify which updates will be in a given release
• Prepare metadata for records being added to or updated in ROR
• Work with curators handling metadata records
• Ensure metadata records pass validation/QA
• Review and test release candidates
• Deploy changes to production via Github-based workflow
• Publish release notes and announce releases to users
• Make public data dump available on Zenodo
• Gather data and generate reports on curation processes to track volume, turnaround times, types of requests, etc.

(3) Metadata management and QA

• Maintain schema documentation and metadata policies
• Analyze current registry data to identify opportunities for metadata QA and future improvements
• Work with ROR’s development team on schema updates and metadata clean-up

(4) Community engagement

• Respond to support questions about curation policies and release timelines
• Provide updates at community calls and webinars
• Collect feedback from community to inform curation policies and process

Required skills and qualifications

• University degree
• Experience in metadata curation
• Experience in data analysis
• Experience in workflow development and optimization
• Experience with Github and Markdown
• Experience working with RESTful APIs and related web services/technologies
• Ability to work with small distributed remote teams across time zones
• Ability to lead small groups
• Strong, compelling, and clear written, oral, and visual communication
• Self-motivated to succeed and take initiative and seek continuous improvement

Desired skills

• Outreach experience
• Data science skills
• Familiarity with scholarly research infrastructures and the open science landscape
• Familiarity with product management
• Experience working in an international environment

Position details

This is a part-time contracted position (up to 20 hours a week) for two years. This position will be in contract with Crossref but will be accountable to the three organizations that operate ROR (Crossref, California Digital Library, and DataCite).

This is a remote position. The ROR team is distributed across Europe and North America. Some travel (1-3 times/year) may be expected depending on global public health guidelines.

To apply

To apply, send a resume and statement of interest to jobs@ror.org. Applications will be accepted until the position is filled. Review of applications will begin October 25.

Equal opportunity statement

ROR, and the collaborating organizations behind it, California Digital Library, Crossref, and DataCite, are committed to non-discrimination and making opportunities available to anyone without regard to race, color, religion, sex, pregnancy or a condition related to pregnancy, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, national origin, ancestry, age, physical or mental disability, genetic information, veteran status, uniform service member status, or any other protected class under applicable law.