Biomedical Literature Indexer (MeSH and Metadata Specialist)

Key Responsibilities

• Review biomedical literature and assign appropriate controlled-vocabulary terms, including MeSH and related biomedical vocabularies, to support accurate discovery and retrieval.
• Analyze article content, including titles, abstracts, full text, tables, figures, methods, results, and author keywords, to identify major topics, secondary concepts, publication types, populations, study types, organisms, diseases, chemicals, procedures, and other relevant biomedical concepts.
• Apply indexing policies, scope notes, tree structures, qualifiers, publication types, and vocabulary relationships consistently across citations, records, and related information resources.
• Distinguish between closely related biomedical concepts and select the most precise terminology for indexing, retrieval, and quality control.
• Support manual indexing, indexing review, and quality assurance workflows for biomedical citations and related records.
• Audit, check, edit, enhance, and correct bibliographic citations and associated metadata using controlled vocabularies, terminology systems, authority files, and approved standards.
• Identify inaccurate, incomplete, inconsistent, duplicate, or ambiguous citation metadata and recommend appropriate corrections.
• Link related resource records to improve discoverability, access, interoperability, and consistency across systems.
• Analyze recurring indexing, terminology, or metadata issues and recommend workflow, training, documentation, or system improvements.
• Support terminology analysis, vocabulary review, terminology mapping, metadata standardization, and identification of gaps, ambiguities, or emerging concepts requiring escalation.

Qualifications

• Required:
• Bachelor’s degree or higher in biology, biomedical science, health sciences, library/information science, public health, or a related discipline
• 3+ years of experience reviewing, indexing, annotating, curating, or analyzing biomedical literature or scientific information resources
• Experience applying MeSH or comparable controlled vocabularies, biomedical terminology, indexing policies, or metadata standards to scientific records
• Experience auditing, editing, or enhancing bibliographic citations, metadata, or structured scientific records
• Experience using biomedical literature databases, especially PubMed/MEDLINE or comparable resources
• Strong attention to detail, biomedical vocabulary knowledge, and ability to apply quality control standards consistently
• Preferred:
• Advanced degree in biomedical science, library/information science, public health, or a related field
• Experience performing MeSH indexing, biomedical citation curation, or controlled-vocabulary annotation
• Experience reviewing machine-assisted indexing recommendations or supporting automated indexing workflows
• Experience with quality assurance for biomedical literature databases, citation records, terminology systems, or metadata products
• Experience working in a federal, biomedical research, health sciences library, academic publishing, or scientific database environment

Benefits

• Health, dental, vision, and disability and life insurance
• 401(k) plan with matching
• Paid leave starting at 128 hours/year for the first 3 years of employment
• 11 paid holidays

About the Role

Support the organization, indexing, and discoverability of biomedical literature through the assignment, review, validation, and improvement of controlled-vocabulary metadata. Work with librarians, data curators, terminology specialists, product teams, and technical staff to improve indexing quality, terminology application, citation metadata, record linking, and discoverability across biomedical information systems.