MIT Press Releases: “Mind the Gap: A Landscape Analysis of Open Source Publishing Tools and Platforms”

From MIT Press:

The number of open source (OS) online publishing platforms, i.e. production and hosting systems for scholarly books and journals, launched or in development, has proliferated in the last decade. Many of these publishing infrastructure initiatives are well-developed, stable, and supported by a small but vigorous distributed community of developers, but promising new ventures have also recently launched.

The notable increase in the number of OS platforms suggest that an infrastructure ‘ecology’ is emerging around these systems. Distinguishing between systems that may evolve along competitive lines and those that will resolve into a service ‘stack’ of related, complementary service technologies will help potential adopters understand how these platforms can or should interoperate.

In 2018 the MIT Press secured a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon foundation to conduct a landscape analysis of open source publishing systems, suggest sustainability models that can be adopted to ensure that these systems fully support research communication and provide durable alternatives to complex and costly proprietary services. John Maxwell at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver conducted the environmental scan and compiled this report.

Direct to Full Text Report: “Mind the Gap: A Landscape Analysis of Open Source Publishing Tools and Platforms” (via PubPub)
Authors:  John W Maxwell, Erik Hanson, Leena Desai, Carmen Tiampo, Kim O’Donnell, Avvai Ketheeswaran, Melody Sun, Emma Walter, and Ellen Michelle

See Also: MIT to Conduct an Environmental Scan of Open Source Publishing (June 22, 2019)

See Also: Grant Announcement: A Landscape Analysis of Open Source Book Production Systems and Publishing Platforms (May 17, 2018; via Mellon Foundation)

Filed under: Funding, News, Publishing