Editor- in-Chief
Remote / Hybrid
About Nishan
Nishan.'s mission is to make original scientific research accessible to students regardless of institutional privilege. We build the infrastructure (peer-reviewed publication, research tooling, outreach, computational resources, and academic community) that lets pre-professional students across every STEM discipline become producers of knowledge rather than passive consumers of it. Our team is a growing group of researchers, educators, students, and operators who believe that the distribution of scientific talent is far wider than the distribution of scientific opportunity, and that this gap is an engineering problem we can solve.
About the role
Most student journals accept manuscripts. Fewer actually edit them. An editor's real work begins after a paper clears review: taking sound science and turning it into something a reader will finish and an author is proud to have their name on. That craft is what the Editor in Chief is here to lead.
You set what our journal sounds like and what it stands for. You own its editorial identity, the standard for how an argument is made and how clearly it is written, and the working relationship with authors as their drafts are revised. You report directly to the Executive Director, and the two of you decide together what runs and what gets sent back for another round. In practice you drive that process day to day; final sign-off rests with the Executive Director. Across a growing catalog of published papers, you are the reason they read like they belong to the same journal.
This is a role for someone who reads a rough draft and sees the paper it could become. If editing to you means catching typos rather than shaping arguments, you will find the job smaller than it actually is.
Key responsibilities
- Set the editorial vision and identity of the journal, and decide what earns a place in it
- Work with the Executive Director to decide what gets published, including when to accept, when to return work for revision, and when to decline
- Work directly with authors through revision, strengthening their argument, structure, and prose without flattening their voice
- Hold the line on clarity, so published work is legible to a reader outside the author's narrow subfield
- Shape each issue as a coherent whole rather than a stack of unrelated papers, and keep the pipeline moving from submission to publication
- Recruit, train, and coordinate a section and copy editing team
- Keep style, citation, and presentation consistent across everything the journal publishes
You may be a good fit if you
- Have edited other people's writing and made it better, whether for a research publication, a school paper, a literary magazine, or a writing-heavy organization
- Read closely enough to tell a weak argument apart from a strong one you happen to disagree with
- Can tell an author their draft is not working in a way that makes them want to fix it rather than give up
- Have run a publication or a recurring deliverable on a deadline and know what it takes to actually get an issue out
- Write well enough yourself to model the standard you are asking authors to meet
- Care as much about the reader who will encounter the work as about the author who produced it
Strong candidates may also have
- Experience with a school newspaper, literary journal, research publication, or comparable editorial operation
- Familiarity with academic writing conventions and at least one citation style
- Experience leading a team of editors or writers toward a shared publication
- A sense of how a run of published work builds a reputation over time
- Prior involvement in student journalism, writing competitions, or science communication
How we're different
We believe the highest-impact work in science education is not teaching students facts but giving them the infrastructure to generate knowledge themselves. Nishan operates as a single coordinated organization pursuing a small number of ambitious efforts rather than a scattered collection of programs. The journal is the most visible thing we make, and we edit it like a real credential is on the line, because for many of our authors it is their first. We will argue about a comma and about whether a claim has earned its place, and we think both arguments are worth having. If you want to know what we hold ourselves to, read an issue.
Logistics
Minimum education: None required. We evaluate candidates on the editorial work they have done, not on credentials.
Required background: A record of editing and publishing the work of others, demonstrated through a publication, an editorial role, or comparable experience.
Commitment: This is currently a part-time and largely volunteer leadership role within a nonprofit organization. We are candid about this because we respect your time, and because the people who thrive here are motivated by the mission rather than the compensation.
Location: Remote, with occasional coordination across time zones. We are a distributed team.
We encourage you to apply even if you do not meet every qualification listed. Research consistently shows that people from underrepresented groups are more likely to experience imposter syndrome and to disqualify themselves prematurely. We would rather read your application and decide together than have you decide not to submit it. We think broadening who participates in science is central to our mission, and that makes a range of perspectives on our team more important, not less.
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