Vacancies, Training & Volunteering

About us

Open Book Publishers is an innovative, not-for-profit Open Access academic publisher based in Cambridge, actively changing the nature of the traditional academic book. We are widely recognised as world leaders in Open Access scholarly monograph publishing, and proud to have published over 200 titles - including works by renowned authors such as Noam Chomsky and Amartya Sen. All our books are available online free of charge, so that everyone can access high quality peer-reviewed research regardless of income, as well as in printed and ebook editions. We are very proud that our free online titles have now been read by over two million people worldwide, and are attracting over 400 readers per title every month.

Equality and Diversity

OBP is committed to encouraging equality and diversity among our workforce, and eliminating unlawful discrimination on the basis of age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race (including colour, nationality, and ethnic or national origin), religion or belief, sex (gender) and sexual orientation.

Vacancies

Open Access Book Designer and Typesetter

Open Book Publishers, a non-profit open access academic publisher, is looking for a full-time Book Designer and Typesetter.

The successful candidate will be responsible for designing and typesetting open access books published by OBP. The duties will include formatting text, images and audio/visual files to create beautiful printed and digital books and covers, as well as creating and maintaining metadata for our titles. You will be expected to work collaboratively with our editorial and distribution teams and with authors in fulfilling your tasks.

The position will be particularly suitable for a person with good IT skills and a genuine interest in open access and academic book publishing. A good working knowledge of software packages such as InDesign, Photoshop, Word and Excel is essential. Expertise in LaTeX would be welcomed, as would experience in related areas such as Digital Humanities and Digital Publishing.

Starting Date: April 2023, or as soon as possible thereafter.

Location: Remote work. OBP is based in Cambridge, UK, but all work within the company is conducted remotely, although attendance at occasional physical meetings in Cambridge is expected (every two months on average).

Working hours: Full time (40 hrs/week) with at least 5 hours per weekday occurring between 9.30am and 3.30pm (UK time).

Salary: Within the range of £24-30k pa, depending on experience and qualifications.

Applications: Applicants are requested to submit a CV, covering letter and references (upon request) by email to Rupert Gatti, rupert.gatti@openbookpublishers.com.

Deadline: The position will remain open until a suitable candidate has been appointed.

Further details: A detailed breakdown of the role is available to download. Please contact Rupert with any questions or for further information about this position.

Training

We offer training placements in all aspects of Open Access publishing, free of charge. In the past we have provided placements as part of university courses (such as the MSt in Creative Writing at the University of Oxford, the Master in Publishing at City University of London), work placements (School of Arts, Birbeck, University of London) and to other Open Access publishers, such as UGA Editions and Firenze University Press. Placements usually cover editorial skills, marketing, or technical aspects such as the creation of XML editions. For more information or to discuss a possible placement, please contact Alessandra Tosi.

Volunteering Opportunities

If you would like to support our work by volunteering, get in touch! We welcome volunteers of different levels of skill and experience; we work remotely; and we are happy for volunteers to work to their own schedules rather than to our working day if that's more convenient. However, we will only consider volunteers who have an undergraduate degree or are currently studying at that level or above.

• If you are new to publishing you would have the opportunity to try a range of key aspects, including marketing, editorial and text-formatting tasks in a non-corporate environment. We are a small team and there is always lots to do, so you can get involved rather than simply observe.
• If you have some experience, we would love to hear from you if you would be willing to help us in any aspect of our work: proofreading, typesetting, copy editing, marketing, peer-reviewing, developing our website, or providing specialist expertise in your own field of research.

To find out more about what we do, take a look at Our Vision, Information for New Authors, our Advocacy and our Twitter account.

Unfortunately we are unable to remunerate our volunteers. If you would like to apply please send your cover letter and CV to Alessandra Tosi.