A major report on the current state of all available open-source software for publishing

To help visualize the functional scope of various development agendas, the authors of Mind the Gap propose a hypothetical publishing workflow that covers a number of stages in order to show how various projects address different functional areas. The focus here is with software development priorities. CREDIT Mind the Gap (mindthegap.pubpub.org)

Mellon-funded report Mind the Gap catalogs and analyzes all available open-source software for publishing and warns that open publishing must grapple with the dual challenges of siloed development and organization of the community-owned ecosystem

The MIT Press is pleased to release Mind the Gap (openly published at mindthegap.pubpub.org), a major report on the current state of all available open-source software for publishing. Funded by a grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the report “shed[s] light on the development and deployment of open-source publishing technologies in order to aid institutions’ and individuals’ decision-making and project planning.” It will be an unparalleled resource for the scholarly publishing community and complements the recently released Mapping the Scholarly Communication Landscape census.

The report authors, led by John Maxwell, Associate Professor and Director of the Publishing Program at Simon Fraser University, catalog 52 open-source online publishing platforms, i.e. production and hosting systems for scholarly books and journals, that meet the survey criteria of “available, documented open-source software relevant to scholarly publishing” and in active development. This research provides the foundation for a thorough analysis of the open publishing ecosystem and the availability, affordances, and current limitations of these platforms and tools.

The number of open-source online publishing platforms has proliferated in the last decade, but the report finds that they are often too small, too siloed, and too niche to have much impact beyond their host organization or institution. This leaves them vulnerable to shifts in organizational priorities and external funding sources that emphasize new projects over the maintenance and improvement of existing projects. This fractured ecosystem is difficult to navigate, and the report concludes that if open publishing is to become a durable alternative to complex and costly proprietary services, it must grapple with the dual challenges of siloed development and organization of the community-owned ecosystem itself.

“What are the forces–and organizations–that serve the larger community, that mediate between individual projects, between projects and use cases, and between projects and resources,” asks the report. “Neither a chaotic plurality of disparate projects nor an efficiency-driven, enforced standard is itself desirable, but mediating between these two will require broad agreement about high-level goals, governance, and funding priorities–and perhaps some agency for integration/mediation.”?

“We found that even though platform leaders and developers recognize that collaboration, standardization, and even common code layers can provide considerable benefit to project ambitions, functionality, and sustainability, the funding and infrastructure supporting open publishing projects discourages these activities,” explains Maxwell. “If the goal is to build a viable alternative to proprietary publishing models, then open publishing needs new infrastructure that incentivizes sustainability, cooperation, collaboration, and integration.”

“John Maxwell and his team have done a tremendous job collecting and analyzing data that confirm that open publishing is at a pivotal crossroads,” says Amy Brand, Director of the MIT Press. “It is imperative that the scholarly publishing community come together to find new ways to fund and incentivize collaboration and adoption if we want these projects to succeed. I look forward to the discussions that will emerge from these findings.”

Learn more: The MIT Press releases a major report on all available open-source publishing software