Jobs at GigaScience

Position: Data Editor

Employer: BGI-HK, Publishing Department

Location: Hong Kong Science Park, Hong Kong SAR or Shenzhen, China*

* There is potential for telecommuting, but the applicant must be in a time-zone that overlaps both China and Europe working hours

Start time: As soon as available

Salary: Commensurate with experience

GigaScience Press aims to achieve true open science by embracing the UNESCO Open Science Recommendation for its publications and activities. The Press publishes two award winning Open Science journals, which have the goal of making scientific communication reach researchers and communities around the globe in the most reusable fashion possible. The Press also runs a data publishing platform (GigaDB) with an in-house data curation team to link published articles with data and other research objects, helping support reproducibility, reusability, and the FAIR principles of data stewardship.

We are seeking a Data Editor to join the GigaDB team. The position offers a unique opportunity to assist in the development of a new standard in transparent and trustworthy scientific publishing, and to change scientific communication beyond a PDF.

Job Description

The Data Editor will be responsible for reading research manuscripts that are being considered for publication by GigaScience Press journals: GigaScience and GigaByte . The job primarily focuses on identifying data, software, tools, scripts etc. that have been generated or used to carry out all the scientific analyses in a manuscript and organizing this material using appropriate standards from each research community. It will also be the Data Editor’s responsibility to contact the authors to obtain identified or missing research objects for use during peer review process and, if the manuscript is accepted, for open release in GigaDB or another community-approved database. The Data Editor will liaise with the journal editors, the other data editors, the IT team, and the authors to provide a streamlined process for identifying, obtaining, and making openly available all the sharable digital materials used for carrying out the research in the manuscript.

We are particularly interested in applicants that can complement our current breadth of knowledge within the team by bringing expertise in the areas of: biological imaging, machine learning/AI, or other biological or biomedical studies with openly shareable digital resources. (We are not currently considering individuals with curation experience primarily or only with genetics data.)

Duties to include:

• Reading manuscripts submitted to the journals to determine which data and analysis tools have been used in the manuscript.
• Reviewing the data and tools to assess whether the authors provide consistency and have adhered to community standards.
• Contacting authors to obtain access to - or submission of - data and tools as needed for peer review.
• Determining if any information on data and tools that would be necessary for the analyses is missing from the manuscript.
• Assessing whether the data have been improperly manipulated or modified.
• Ensuring, prior to peer review, that all the data, software, tools, scripts etc. will be made openly available upon publication of the manuscript without restriction, excepting data that must be held in a controlled access repository but can still be accessed by appropriate researchers internationally.
• Ensuring that the data, etc. are properly referenced in the manuscript.
• Ensuring that the data, etc. are placed in the appropriate repositories on or before the manuscript publication date.
• Advising submitting authors on the appropriate repositories for their data.
• Assisting authors with submission of data to GigaDB. (This involves curating or aiding in curation of: samples, data files, study metadata, and experimental information.)
• Working closely with and being in constant communication with the editorial and database teams who are located around the world in 6 different time zones.

Qualifications and Experience

Required:

• PhD (or equivalent experience) in biological or computer sciences
• Previous experience in one or more of the preferred research areas (Biological imaging, Machine learning/AI, and/or Biomedical/Health studies.) Experience with other broad biological and biomedical areas, excepting genetics, may also be of interest.
• Experience reading, writing, and/or reviewing scientific manuscripts.
• Excellent written and oral communication skills (English)
• Extreme attention to detail
• Ability to work independently with minimal daily supervision
• Good understanding of data management and bioinformatics
• Good working knowledge of Linux command line environment and FTP
• Broad understanding of different file formats
• Experience using and understanding the importance of data standards

Experience in any of the following is a plus:

• BioCuration
• Bioinformatics
• Public repositories and the standards they are expected to adhere to
• Database structure/schema
• Working in GitHub
• Working with files in a cloud environment

For interested parties please submit an application letter, a full resume including current, desired salary, and availability by email to: Laurie Goodman, PhD, Publishing Director, GigaScience Press at Laurie@gigasciencejournal.com. We will contact you to arrange an interview at the soonest available time.