Job Posting: Founding Editor-in-Chief (multiple positions)

Contract Term: Temporary
Contract Type: Part Time
Job Location: Anywhere
Application Deadline: applications are accepted continuously

Job Categories
Business/Strategic Management:
Strategy/Planning
Information technology
Digital Media
Editorial/Writing:
Documentation/Technical Writing
Editing & Proofreading
General/Other: Editorial/Writing

Job Description
JMIR Publications is an open access academic publisher based in Toronto, Canada, and is the leading publisher of peer-reviewed journals in the ehealth domain. Our mission is to reinvent research communication through grassroots, researcher-driven innovation in every aspect of peer-reviewed publishing, making use of Internet, social media, and mobile technologies, and we are currently expanding into other science domains.

To expand our journal portfolio we are looking for visionary and highly regarded scientists, primarily working at the intersections between technology and medicine, to lead the creation and development of new journals in emerging disciplines and rapidly expanding research areas (e.g. JMIR mHealth, JMIR Serious Games, JMIR Bioinformatics, JMIR Biomedical Engineering etc.).

We are also looking for new editor-in-chiefs for existing journals: i-JMR and JMIR Research Protocols, and JMIR.

Editors-in-chief must be highly regarded and cited individuals (evidenced by their list of publications and their h-index, generally at least 15-20) and must have a clear vision for their journal, including a plan to solicit editorial board members and the first 20 submissions. The application process consists of developing a journal proposal containing these details.
Ongoing tasks will be to guide submissions through the peer-review process, (light) academic editing of submissions, and liaising with the JMIR production team.

An honorarium will be paid.


Applications process:
To apply as editor-in-chief for new journals, please develop and submit a journal proposal, containing for example

  1. a short bio of the editor in chief, and a dump of the most cited publications (e.g. from Web of Science, Google Scholar, or Scopus), ranked by the number of citations, showing the h-index of the applicant (e.g. first 20 publications which are cited more than 20 times = h-index of 20).
  2. Name of the future journal ("JMIR [Discipline]")
  3. Scope and mission of the journal
  4. An estimate of the "market" size in terms of how many papers per year in this discipline are published, with projections (e.g. search PubMed). We are primarily interested in growing disciplines
  5. List competitor/similar journals and their impact factors, and how the new journal would distinguish itself from them
  6. Example titles for articles to be published
  7. A list of future possible editorial board members
  8. A clear plan on how to solicit the first 20 papers for the new journal


To apply as editor-in-chief for one of the existing JMIR journals (i-JMR, JMIR, JMIR Research Protocols), please submit

  1. a short bio of the editor in chief, and a dump of the most cited publications (e.g. from Web of Science, Google Scholar, or Scopus), ranked by the number of citations
  2. explain how you would sharpen or expand the current scope and mission of these journals
  3. highlight your academic standing and network, and explain why you would be the ideal editor-in-chief
  4. outline a clear strategy of how you would develop the current journals further (growth in quantity and quality)
  5. list possible editorial board members (name, affiliation)


Please email your application documents to jmir.editorial.office@gmal.com with the subject line "editor-in-chief [journalname]".
We thank all applicants for their interest, but can only respond to those considered for the position.