Deadline: 17 March 2025
About TASO
TASO is an affiliate What Works Centre and part of the UK Government’s What Works Movement. Our aim is to help eliminate equality gaps in higher education through evidence-informed practice. TASO was set up in 2019 and became an independent charity in April 2021. Our work focuses on the generation, synthesis and dissemination of high-quality evidence about effective practices to widen access and participation in higher education and improve student outcomes.
About the toolkit
TASO’s student access, success, and progression evidence toolkit is a series of structured collections of research summaries and digests of the existing evidence on approaches to widening access and participation in higher education and improving student outcomes for disadvantaged and underrepresented groups. Designed to help policymakers, practitioners, and researchers in the higher education sector make evidence-informed decisions, the toolkit is regularly updated based on literature reviews of the latest developments and research on higher education access, success, and progression interventions.
The role
TASO is seeking to contract a Consultant Information Retrieval Specialist to support the development of its evidence reviews and updates to its student access, success, and progression evidence toolkit. The information specialist will work with the Research and Evaluation team at TASO to develop complex searches of higher education research literature.
Key responsibilities
- Advising and providing guidance to the Research and Evaluation team on literature search methods, information retrieval and academic and grey literature databases.
- Designing complex search strategies for evidence reviews on the impacts of interventions targeted at widening access and participation in higher education and improving student outcomes.
- Testing and executing database searches as agreed with the Research and Evaluation team.
- Documenting search strategies and methods in line with international standards, such as the Campbell Collaboration’s MECCIR (Methodological Expectations of Campbell Collaboration Intervention Reviews).
Qualifications and key competencies
Essential
- Demonstrated experience designing and executing complex search strategies for evidence gap maps, rapid evidence reviews and/or systematic reviews.
- Familiarity with databases covering a wide range of disciplines, including education, economics, and more broadly the social sciences
- Knowledge of reference management/systematic review software and ability to work with and manipulate bulk bibliographic metadata in a variety of digital formats (ris, csv, etc.).
Desirable
- Knowledge and experience working in the higher education research sector.
- Knowledge of emerging techniques for improving and/or automating elements of the literature searching process, including text mining, citation analysis, and web scraping.
Terms of appointment
An initial contract will be granted for three months from the start date. The scope of the assignment and total time commitment will be negotiated and agreed with the successful candidate. This position is fully remote and can be conducted from the UK or abroad. The consultant will be paid an agreed day rate commensurate with this position.
How to apply
To apply, please send a CV (no longer than two pages), cover letter, and a quote for your expected daily rate to people@taso.org.uk, citing “Information Retrieval Specialist” in the email subject.
We also ask that you fill out our online EDI monitoring form when you submit your application. The form is anonymous.
We encourage interested candidates to inquire if you have questions or want to discuss your suitability for this role. We will facilitate brief online conversations with the TASO team. Please email info@taso.org.uk to request a call.
Deadline for applications: 09:00 (GMT) on 17 March 2025.
Shortlisted applicants will be invited to discuss the opportunity further on the w/c 24 March 2025.
Note: We will only contact shortlisted candidates.