Manager, Academic Content Licensing & Acquisition

Job Title: Manager, Academic Content Licensing & Acquisition
Location-Type: Remote (EST/CST Preferred)
Work Hours: 37.5 hours/week, flexible start between 7:30–9:30 AM EST
Start Date Is: ASAP
Duration: 6-Month Contract-to-Hire
Compensation Range: $50/hr - $55/hr W2 (Conversion: $100K–$127K)
Benefits: Eligible for Health, Dental, Vision, 401K

Job Description:

Our client is seeking a Manager, Academic Content Licensing & Acquisition to oversee the identification, evaluation, licensing, and acquisition of scholarly journals and academic books for a leading research database. This individual will manage a team of seven employees responsible for content acquisition, evaluation, and processing while maintaining relationships with academic publishers and negotiating large-scale content licensing agreements.

Key Responsibilities:

• Lead the acquisition and evaluation of scholarly journals and academic books for inclusion in research databases.
• Manage seven direct reports responsible for journal and book acquisition, electronic content feeds, content retrieval, and database accessioning.
• Develop and maintain relationships with third-party academic publishers, scholarly societies, and content providers.
• Negotiate large-scale licensing agreements with major academic publishers, including agreements covering hundreds of journals or books.
• Oversee electronic content feeds and collaborate with technical teams to ensure efficient content delivery and metadata processing.
• Establish content evaluation standards and collection development policies to ensure appropriate journal and book coverage.
• Develop and manage annual departmental budgets, resources, and operational priorities.
• Oversee team performance, improve acquisition workflows, and collaborate with internal leadership and external publishing partners.

Requirements:

• 5–10+ years of experience in scholarly publishing, academic content licensing, acquisition, or related operations.
• 3–5+ years of direct people management experience, ideally within scholarly publishing or academic content operations.
• Hands-on experience acquiring and licensing scholarly journals, academic books, or research content from external publishers.
• Demonstrated experience negotiating complex, large-scale licensing agreements with major third-party academic publishers.
• Strong understanding of scholarly publishing, content acquisition processes, and academic journal/book evaluation.
• Knowledge of copyright, content permissions, and Creative Commons licensing.
• Experience developing and managing annual budgets.
• Strong leadership, negotiation, communication, and external relationship management skills.
• Bachelor's degree required.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience working for an academic research database, scholarly content aggregator, or indexing organization such as Clarivate, ProQuest, EBSCO, JSTOR, or similar.
• Experience negotiating content agreements with major publishers such as Elsevier, Wiley, or Springer Nature.
• Background evaluating journal quality, including identifying predatory journals or managing publication inclusion decisions.
• Degree in Psychology, Library Science, Information Science, or a related discipline.
• Familiarity with electronic content feeds, scholarly metadata, and database content processing.