Research Associate AI Scientometrics

Research Associate on AI for Scientometrics

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Job Description

Job Title:

Research Associate on AI for Scientometrics Posting

Start Date:

03/09/2026 Job  School/Department:
Information, Journalism & Communication Work Arrangement:
Full Time (Hybrid) Contract Type:
Fixed-term Salary per annum (£): £38,784.00 Closing Date: 17/09/2026

The University of Sheffield is a remarkable place to work. Our people are at the heart of everything we do. Their diverse backgrounds, abilities and beliefs make Sheffield a world-class university.

We offer a fantastic range of benefits including a highly competitive annual leave entitlement (with the ability to purchase more), a generous pensions scheme, flexible working opportunities, a commitment to your development and wellbeing, a wide range of retail discounts, and much more. Find out more about our benefits (opens in a new window) and join us to become part of something special.

This is a 12-month postdoctoral research position on the ESRC-funded metascience project “Rigour Hygiene Indicators for Research Assessment”. You will work with Dr Xiaorui Jiang as part of a team of researchers developing an indicator that determines whether a research body reports statistically significant results more often than would be plausible given typical study sizes. You will support the technical delivery of an automated natural language processing pipeline for extracting statistical metrics and study design features from full texts.

This includes developing and maintaining the automated full-text processing workflow, implementing extraction methods, and supporting the integration of structured data into the indicator pipeline. This role requires specialist expertise in computational text processing, natural language processing and large language models.

• Develop an automated pipeline for the data collection, cleaning and processing of scientific articles

• Statistically analyse the results, such as with correlation tests, and write up the results for publication.

• Collaborate with others in the project on shared tasks, including with project partners across four universities in the UK.

• Manage a network of researchers and others interested in assessment of the healthiness of research outputs in medical and psychological domains.

• Attend project meetings, present regular progress reports, and participate in other project-relevant activities such as training, dissemination, networking, stakeholder engagement, etc..

• Present at conferences and workshops internationally and in the UK.

• Observe the project’s Data Management Plan and contribute to maintaining a well‑organised shared file system.

• As a member of staff you will be encouraged to make ethical decisions in your role, embedding the University sustainability strategy into your working activities wherever possible.

• Contribute to University life, including the free exchange of ideas and a commitment to the achievement of excellence in research and scholarship and so advance the discipline and wider society.

• Carry out other duties, commensurate with the grade and remit of the post.

Our diverse community of staff and students recognises the unique abilities, backgrounds, and beliefs of all. We foster a culture where everyone feels they belong and is respected. Even if your past experience doesn't match perfectly with this role's criteria, your contribution is valuable, and we encourage you to apply. Please ensure that you reference the application criteria in the application statement when you apply.

A PhD (or equivalent) in Data Science, Computer Science, Information Science/Studies, or relevant fields

Application/Interview

Strong Python programming experience in machine learning and natural language processing ecosystems

Application/Interview

Good expertise in basic statistics.

Application/Interview

Familiarity with R would be a bonus to work with the necessary toolchain

Application

Experience of using Large…