The Publisher Relations and Content Development position, will work closely with the Director and senior leadership of Project MUSE to influence and direct MUSE’s mission in advancing strategy and fostering revenue-beneficial relationships with new and active publishers. The overarching goal is to ensure that Project MUSE remains a competitive aggregator, platform, and a significant player within the scholarly communications community. MUSE is committed to disseminating the knowledge base of many disciplines in humanities and social science via a sustainable business model. Strong publisher relationships are critical in achieving these goals.
Project MUSE is a division of The Johns Hopkins University Press. Founded in 1878, the Press is the oldest continuously operating university press in the United States as well as one of the largest. The Press is an innovative leader in scholarly book, journal, and digital publishing.
Project MUSE is a multi-million-dollar electronic database of academic books and journals in the humanities and social sciences. We produce content from over 260 not-for-profit academic publishers, including more than 600 academic journals and 40,000 front-list and back-list monographs. We recently received a generous grant from the Andrew W. Mellon foundation to expand our open access offerings.
- In concert with the Director and senior management, develop and execute strategic plans for the growth and diversification of MUSE’s content portfolio, including industry positioning, content roadmaps, identification and cultivation of innovative partnerships, and investment optimization.
- Development and maintenance of publisher relationships including prospective and existing publishers. Create materials and tools to understand publisher needs and demonstrate the value proposition of MUSE. Conduct qualitative and/or quanitative research on the needs, perceptions, and expectations of publishers.
- Foster entrepreneurship by promoting the development of new product lines, market structure and brand extensions.
- Work closely with Director of Sales to identify, acquire and create saleable products. Develop and present business cases that ensure strong ROI results for digital and niche products to serve targeted audiences and new market segments.
- Collaborate across related external projects in order to increase value to users, improve operating efficiencies, create linking relationship and expand content corpus.
- Track policy and industry shifts and peripheral value-added developments that may impact Project MUSE. Develop strong networking among industry influentials
- Expand journals hosting program into a competitive revenue-generating product.
- Represent Project MUSE on local, regional, university, national, and international initiatives in the areas of scholarly communications and publishing.
- Supervise up to 5 FTE in the Publisher Relations unit.
- Organize and execute annual publisher’s meeting. The meeting is a critical component of publisher relations.
- Participate on the MUSE advisory board.
- Manage contract development, execution and tracking.
- Develop relationships across the Press that foster a collaborative environment and encourage product development.
- Identify potential funding opportunities and assist in the writing and administration of grants.
- Position will be evaluated on the addition and retention of publishers / content, identifying new businesses, products and models.
- Position requires travel to conferences, meetings and publisher visits.
- Demonstrate high level of professionalism, communication, facilitation and interpersonal skills.
- Bachelor’s required.
- At least 10 years of publishing experience required.
- Master’s preferred.
- Excellent oral and written communication skills
- Ability to work independently, as a team member, and across organizational boundaries in a fast-paced environment
- Flexibility to be organized, productive, and effective in a dynamic environment, while participating in variety of simultaneous initiatives