Role Overview
We are seeking an experienced Business Analyst with strong publishing domain expertise, specifically within the Open Access (OA) publishing ecosystem. The ideal candidate will have hands-on experience working with editorial, production, rights, contracting, pricing, and revenue workflows in Open Access and hybrid publishing environments. This role will support business transformation, process optimisation, system enhancements, and data-driven decision-making across the OA value chain.
Key Responsibilities
1. Business Analysis & Requirements Gathering
- Engage with editorial, production, operations, legal, finance, and technology teams to understand business needs within the OA lifecycle.
- Capture, analyse, and document detailed business requirements, user stories, acceptance criteria, and use cases.
- Conduct gap analysis across current-state OA processes (e.g., submission, peer review, APC management, licence selection, invoicing, and publication).
- Translate complex OA business rules (e.g., funder mandates, rights and licences, multi‑funding scenarios, waiver eligibility) into clear functional specifications.
2. Process Mapping & Optimisation
- Map end‑to‑end OA workflows using BPMN/Visio (submission → editorial → production → APC → invoicing → publication → reporting).
- Identify process inefficiencies, bottlenecks, compliance risks, and improvement opportunities.
- Support design of future‑state processes aligned with business strategy, OA growth initiatives, and customer experience enhancements.
- Collaborate with teams to drive operational excellence, automation, and simplification.
3. Open Access Business Expertise
- Apply deep understanding of OA models, including Gold OA, Hybrid OA, Transformative Agreements, Read & Publish deals, and APC/waiver structures.
- Interpret publishing policies, copyright/licensing requirements (e.g., Creative Commons licences), and funder mandates (e.g., UKRI, Plan S).
- Support OA governance, metadata standards (e.g., ORCID, Crossref, FundRef), and compliance reporting.
. Data & Insights
- Analyse OA performance metrics (submissions, APC revenue, uptake of waivers, turnaround times, compliance rates).
- Work with data teams to ensure accurate metadata, reporting, and analytics across systems.
- Support decision-making with clear dashboards, business cases, and insights.
5. Technology & Systems Support
- Partner with product, engineering, and vendor teams to support system enhancements across tools such as manuscript submission systems, rights/contracting tools, APC management platforms, financial/billing systems, and CRM.
- Assist in system evaluations, UAT, regression testing, and release validation.
- Ensure solutions align with OA policies, regulatory requirements, and operational workflows.
6. Stakeholder Engagement
- Facilitate workshops, requirement sessions, and SME interviews across global publishing teams.
- Act as a bridge between business SMEs and technology teams.
- Present findings, recommendations, and status updates to senior stakeholders.
Required Skills & Experience
Essential
- 5+ years of Business Analysis experience, ideally in academic publishing.
- Strong domain knowledge of Open Access publishing workflows and business models.
- Experience documenting requirements, user stories, process maps, and business cases.
- Understanding of APC workflows, funder policies, rights/licensing, metadata flows, and OA compliance standards.
- Hands-on experience with manuscript submission systems (e.g., Editorial Manager, ScholarOne), APC management tools, SAP/BRIM, CRM, or finance systems.
- Excellent communication and stakeholder management skills.
Strong analytical and problem‑solving capability.
Preferred
- Experience in process transformation, digital publishing, or workflow automation.
- Familiarity with data standards (Crossref, FundRef, ORCID), copyright frameworks, and OA policies.
- Exposure to Agile delivery methodology (Scrum/Kanban).
Experience working in global or matrixed publishing organisations.
Education
- Bachelor’s degree in business, Publishing, Information Systems, or related field.
- Professional certifications (e.g., CBAP, Agile BA, Lean Six Sigma) preferred.
What We Offer
- Opportunity to work on transformative OA initiatives in a global publishing environment.
- Collaboration with cross-functional teams driving innovation in scholarly publishing.
- Growth opportunities within a dynamic and evolving landscape
…