Founding Program Manager

Independent Contract: Founding Program Manager for a Metascience Alliance 

The Center for Open Science is seeking an independent contractor with interest and expertise in metascience and community building to co-create a Metascience Alliance. The Alliance will include a diverse community of researchers, advocates, policymakers, funders, entrepreneurs, and others interested in experimentation, evaluation, and innovation on the practice of science to improve research quality and accelerate progress. We have made a two-year budget commitment (1 year contract, 1 year renewable) to support an entrepreneurial Founding Program Manager to explore the value, viability, and sustainability of a global Metascience Alliance. This role is ideal for an experienced metascience researcher or practitioner to develop a strong community of practice across sectors.

Context

Science as a social system is reluctant to change. There is vast unexplored space in how science could be conducted that might unlock incremental to orders-of-magnitude improvements in the pace of discovery. Metascience assesses the current state of inefficiencies, imagines new designs and practices, conducts trials of potential solutions, and starts and scales alternatives to the social systems of science. Metascience aspires to dramatically accelerate progress. Metascience needs venues to cultivate divergent ideas, create weak ties across disciplinary and sector silos, foster career pathways for budding metascientists, and to form and launch research and entrepreneurial collaborations.

A Metascience Alliance could support these objectives. A Metascience Alliance could be a trusted third party for metascience aligned organizations and individuals. The initial conception suggests three primary objectives:

Community Building: Foster a metascience community of practice across disciplinary and stakeholder silos.

Workforce Development: Improve the pipeline for metascience career pathways in and out of the academy.

Matchmaking: Facilitate funding and collaborative relationships between researchers, funders, donors, publishers, institutions, and societies.

The actual mission, vision, and strategic implementation will be co-created with the community of stakeholders.

Required Skills/Abilities

• Strong leadership and community-building orientation
• Entrepreneurial spirit
• Substantial experience in metascience and knowledge of the metascience landscape
• Ability to work independently and in coordination with multiple stakeholders
• Highly efficient and task-oriented, inspires others
• Attention to detail and very strong documentation and workflow management skills
• Excellent written and oral communication skills, and interpersonal skills 
• Ability to prioritize, make decisions, problem-solve, and ask for help
• Strong practical experience in project management
• Experience with highly collaborative projects

Description of Service

• The independent contractor will coordinate and lead a community-led process to define and refine the objectives for a Metascience Alliance, develop a strategy to enact the Alliance, implement the Alliance for a two-year pilot phase, and develop a sustainability plan if the Alliance shows promise in supporting this community of practice.
• This contract position is expected to last for two years, with a one year initial commitment and second year pending demonstrated progress on achieving the objectives. We expect the contract to be $150,000 per year, paid in quarterly installments. We anticipate that achievement of the objectives will require 40 hours per week of effort for 48 weeks per year.
• The Center for Open Science (COS) is financially sponsoring the two year pilot phase. The position is conceived as an independent contractor so that the development of the governance, mission, strategy, and sustainability of the Metascience Alliance can be designed for whatever is best for the metascience community. For example, the most sensible model might involve the Alliance becoming an independent non-profit, or an initiative with rotating operational responsibility across participating organizations. The purpose of this contract position is to explore how best an Alliance can support the metascience community.

Deliverables

• Defined objectives and key results for the two-year pilot period, co-created with initial individuals, groups, and organizations from across sectors (academia, philanthropic funders, public agencies, private sector, etc) contributing to the formulation of the Alliance. 
• An implementation plan for the two-year project period. The implementation plan should include, at least, the definition of initial activities and approach, timeline and deliverables, preliminary governance and coordination plan for participating organizations, clarification of roles and responsibilities, and strategy for external communications and engagement.
• Criteria for membership or inclusion in the Alliance for organizations, groups, and/or individuals.
• Community commitments from organizations and groups involved in metascience to be involved in the Alliance. Committed organizations and groups should represent the breadth and diversity of metascience-interested groups across sectors and regions. 
• Evidence and reporting on delivery of objectives and key results on a quarterly basis.
• Strategic plan for the Alliance during and beyond the two-year pilot phase including a mission, vision, implementation plan, governance, and sustainability strategy.

Acceptance Criteria

• COS will review documentation of the deliverables on a quarterly basis, with a decision to renew the contract for a second year following the 3rd quarter report.

Anticipated Timeline

• Contract will begin as soon as possible. Quarterly reporting deadlines will be based on contract start date. 
• A visioning meeting of initial organizations interested in a Metascience Alliance is scheduled for early November in Washington DC. The contracted founding program manager will be invited to attend if the contract is in place in time.

Reporting and Communication

• This is a contract position to emphasize independence of the formulation of the Metascience Alliance from COS’s idiosyncratic mission and strategic priorities in metascience. Simultaneously, COS is invested to maximize the potential for success of the Alliance and will offer ongoing support with time and resources. The Founding Program Manager will collaborate closely with the Executive Director during the initial formulation stage, and then with the Senior Director of Research as the project matures into implementation. This will include a minimum of weekly meetings, and on demand asynchronous communication for formulating strategy and conducting community engagement. Further, COS fundraising, marketing and communications, and operations departments will provide support for administrative, sustainability, and communication objectives to increase the capacity of the Alliance to meet its ambitious goals. Finally, during project planning COS and the Founding Program Manager will work together to clarify a budget for meetings, travel, and other expenses that are needed for an effective launch of the Alliance. 

Please apply by submitting a cover letter, CV/resume and answering the 2 pre-qualifying questions. 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 [email protected].

For information on COS, visit our website at https://www.cos.io/about.