Research Assistant for CrimRxiv

The Criminology department sits within the School of Social Sciences and is a research-oriented department delivering excellent teaching to undergraduate and postgraduate students. They are seeking to appoint a Research Assistant to support CrimRxiv, undertake research on the legal, ethical and technical barriers faced by green open access platforms across disciplines, and contribute to the sustainability of CrimRxiv.

CrimRxiv is the only open access repository devoted to criminology, and ensures that anyone can read the publications it makes available, entirely for free. This site offers functionalities for authors to share their research articles (working papers, preprints, versions of record, and postprints), preregistrations, reviews, chapters and books in open access, at no cost for authors or readers. Since its launch in 2020, CrimRxiv has freely shared over 2,000 publications, with nearly 230,000 views by more than 112,000 readers from 209 countries. In March 2023, it was officially announced that The University of Manchester would become the new home of CrimRxiv, the global repository and hub for open access publications in criminology. This was the result of collaborative efforts from UoM’s Department of Criminology and Library, with the support of UoM’s Leadership team, and further strengthens UoM’s reputation as global leader in criminology and open research.

The successful candidate will work alongside Dr David Buil-Gil (Senior Lecturer in Quantitative Criminology and CrimRxiv’s Managing Moderator), Prof Judith Aldridge (Professor of Criminology and Director of CrimRxiv), and Prof Scott Jacques (Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Georgia State University and Founder of CrimRxiv) to undertake a first-of-its-kind study on the legal, ethical and technical barriers of open access hubs, ensure an efficient moderation of manuscripts submitted to CrimRxiv, design marketing campaigns to ensure CrimRxiv is widely known and used by criminologists worldwide, and apply for grants to ensure the site’s medium and long-term sustainability.

Ideally, the research interests of the successful candidate will fit or complement areas of research excellence in the Department of Criminology, such as drugs (markets, consumption, policy); financial crime, compliance, and regulation; violence and its aftermath; prisons, punishment, and policing; and inequalities connected to offending and victimisation. We particularly encourage applications from candidates with experience and expertise in open research and open science.

Interviews will be held online on 12 October 2023.

Enquiries about the vacancy, shortlisting and interviews:

Name: Dr David Buil-Gil

Email: david.builgil@manchester.ac.uk

General enquiries:

Email: People.recruitment@manchester.ac.uk