PLOS Ecology Community Needs (2) Community Blog Editors

Do you eat, breathe and dream ecology research? Like to blog and tweet? Read on to see if this opportunity is right for you.

If you know the field and the literature from a researcher’s perspective and would like to work part-time as a PLOS Ecology Community Editor, you may be a good fit for this 12-month, contract position working in a PLOS initiative creating discipline-specific online communities. See position description below.

What is the PLOS Ecology Community?

First off, we’re not talking about a new PLOS journal. Two previous PLOS-hosted researcher communities (PLOS Neuro and PLOS Synbio), both launched in 2014, provide a model for this cross-PLOS community outreach initiative (which will also soon include a new PLOS Paleo Community) to support the robust and rapidly growing community of ecology authors who contribute to PLOS journals.

Working in cooperation with staff and academic editors from PLOS ONE, PLOS Biology and PLOS Computational Biology, the PLOS Ecology Community, led by its Community Editors, will employ a variety of web properties and social media networks to catalyze and track conversations between scientists doing ecology research — wherever those conversations may happen. In addition to the PLOS journal sites, new venues (including this PLOS Ecology Community Field Reports site and the @PLOSEcology Twitter account) have the primary purpose of supporting informal discussion of new ecology, environmental and climate science research articles published by PLOS.

To join the PLOS Ecology Community, and receive monthly updates on notable new ecology papers published by PLOS journals, blog posts discussing new research, and other community news, click here to input your name and email address.

The Position

The position of PLOS Ecology Community Blog Editor requires 10–15 hours per month for a 12-month period performing the tasks listed below. Immediately, the PLOS Ecology Community Editors will attend the Ecological Association of America’s “ESA ’100” annual meeting in Baltimore, MD, August 9–14 to help organize collaborative blog coverage of the conference for the PLOS Ecology Community.

For performing this work, the PLOS Ecology Community Editor will be paid a modest monthly honorarium, and they will be recognized both on the website, and in any public communications, as a “PLOS Ecology Community Site Editor” (Travel funds will also be awarded for the Community Editor’s ESA ‘100 attendance).

Specific Duties:

· Writing 2 monthly blog posts for the community site (500 -750 words), about a research article or other related topic, which would include at least one interview with a leading ecology or climate science researcher.

· Recruiting other ecology researchers to contribute blog posts

· Finding online info and resources of use/interest to ecology blog readers (e.g. news, jobs, grants, tools, protocols, data-sharing) for curation as part of site feeds.

· Tweeting and using other social media to increase community site email opt-ins and site engagement

· Coordinating planning and execution of these tasks with a second Community Site Editor, and consulting with PLOS blogs manager and, on occasion, other PLOS editorial staff, to prepare a monthly editorial calendar (blog topics/authors) and test other ideas and incentives for community site engagement.

· Attend one conference in this discipline as a PLOS Community representative.

Requirements:

· Broad knowledge of research in the discipline

· Active user of Twitter and other social media

· Competency as a science/research blogger (2 samples)

· Early career scientist/researcher in the discipline at the doctorate or post-doctorate level

· Experienced peer to peer science communicator/ and project collaborator

Next

If you’d like to be considered, send your CV, any social media identities and a sample blog post with a brief note describing your interest in this role and current work situation to: ecologycommunity@plos.org

THANKS!