Background

The Center for Open Science (COS) has a mission to increase openness, integrity, and reproducibility of research. COS pursues that mission by offering solutions to make it possible and easy for researchers to adopt open practices, builds and supports grassroots communities to shift norms toward open practices, engages stakeholders to shape incentives and policies to reward open practices, and continuously evaluates the solutions and progress to improve impact and effectiveness. 

The Senior Director of Policy is a new role to lead COS’s work to shape the reward system toward open scholarship. Internally, the Senior Director will coordinate with product, research, marketing, development, and operations teams to align strategy, priorities, and execution across departments. Externally, the Senior Director will engage the stakeholder community with an expansive approach to changing incentives and policy. As a decentralized system, the key challenge for improving the research reward system is solving the coordination problem across institutions, funders, publishers, societies, governments, and other agents. The Senior Director will lean into that complexity and leverage COS’s capabilities and social network to offer solutions, break silos, and support change agents.

COS does not set policy or govern the reward system in science. COS is an enabler, catalyzer, and friction reducer for change agents who can shift policies and rewards for the communities that they lead and support. The Senior Director will lead COS’s policy efforts with vision and thought leadership about what the research culture could be; development and delivery of solutions for change agents to initiate, scale, and sustain change; implement strategy to gain adoption of those solutions; and, use evidence and insight about the solutions to adapt or change course when they are ineffective.

The Senior Director of Policy will report to the Executive Director. They will work closely with leaders of the research, product, and operations teams on strategy and delivery of COS’s mission and priorities. The Senior Director must have deep experience and understanding of science as a social system, the roles of different agents in that system, and the opportunities and challenges to catalyzing change. A successful candidate will have substantial background and leadership roles in one or more sectors of the science system including academic researcher, academic administrator, research funder, editor or publisher, scientific society leader, service provider, policymaker, or other science-affiliated leadership role. There is no preferred originating role, but an understanding of the whole system is a must, as is an action-orientation to effect change.

The Senior Director will have demonstrated excellence in both big picture understanding of the scholarly research landscape for influencing stakeholders, and on-the-ground operational skills to lead and coordinate with a diverse team with different roles and backgrounds to achieve shared objectives. A successful candidate will have a track record of identifying and overcoming barriers to mission advancement and project completion.

Responsibilities

• Establish, lead, and report on the policy roadmap.
• Translate strategic priorities into initiatives, projects, and goals with deliverables, timelines, and resourcing.
• Lead creation, scaling, and sustaining incentive and policy interventions and programs by analyzing and solving for stakeholder needs, interests, and barriers to change, and by using evidence and insight on their effectiveness and impact.
• Lead policy-specific strategic planning and align with COS-wide strategic planning. 
• Build and strengthen collaboration and coalitions with mission-aligned organizations that are also pursuing improvement in research policies and reward systems.
• Engage and catalyze research change agents across sectors to address the coordination problem, and align initiatives and reward systems promoting open science. 
• Support sustainability of COS mission, initiatives, and policy objectives in collaboration with development and organization leadership including fundraising, grant writing, and advancing service models.
• Monitor the policy and reward system landscape and deliver insights to the organization for informing strategy and execution of the mission.
• Contribute thought leadership in the research community to advance the mission and strengthen engagement with the research community including whitepapers, blogs, webinars, and presentations.
• Understand institutional, government, and funder policy landscape, and deliver those insights to inform and align COS teams to support policy change or advancement
• Identify and provide insight internally about the technology and implementation needs of policy stakeholders, particularly, at institutions, governments, and funders

Required Skills/Abilities:

• Significant advocacy and intervention experience -- developing and implementing solutions to improve systems and practices
• Expertise in open science, research integrity, rigor, and reproducibility
• Excellence in strategic planning, execution, and pragmatic problem-solving that advances progress toward ideals
• Outstanding leadership, personnel management, and project management skills
• Credibility and ability to engage stakeholders from grassroots communities to leadership at funders, institutions, societies, and publishers
• Excellent presentation and speaking skills including support- and consensus-building for policy initiatives with external stakeholders
• Ability to think creatively and strategically as part of a diverse team with an aspirational mission that is tackling a complex problem
• Excellent interpersonal and relationship management skills
  

Required Education and Experience

• Doctoral degree in a scientific discipline, or equivalent training and experience to be a credible expert or leader in science 
• 10+ years of relevant experience
• 7+ years of management or leadership experience 

This is a fully remote position with a requirement to attend occasional in-person meetings throughout the year. 

COS supports flexibility in work scheduling with our core hours being 11am - 4pm ET. Modifications for different time zones will be considered for team collaboration. This role entails working across multiple time zones to provide support and coordination among COS staff and global stakeholders. 

COS is based in the United States; Applications from people living outside of the U.S. will be considered from uniquely qualified candidates. U.S. based candidates please note, to be considered for this position you must be authorized to work in the United States and have a U.S. address and bank account.

Please apply by submitting a resume and answering the 4 qualifying questions and providing a cover letter which speaks to your relevant background and interest in this position. Answers to the qualifying questions should be succinct, please limit responses to approximately 250 characters. Questions about the position and COS are welcome and can be directed to jobs@cos.io. For information on COS, including more information on employee benefits and our company culture, visit our website at https://www.cos.io/careers.

This position will remain open for applications until February 24th, 2025.

COS is an equal opportunity employer and all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, pregnancy, age, national origin, disability status, genetic information, protected veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by law. We also strongly encourage applications from members of groups underrepresented in science and technology industries.