London-based, open access publisher Hindawi Limited announced today that it has signed a partnership agreement with the Collaborative Knowledge Foundation (Coko) to develop open source publishing tools.
Hindawi joins the Coko community’s work on the PubSweet framework, an open source platform for scholarly journals. Hindawi becomes the latest major partner in the PubSweet initiative, following earlier announcements from the University of California Press and eLife.
Andrew Smeall, Hindawi’s Head of Strategic Projects, said:
“Researchers are exploring new ways to write, publish, and review scholarly literature. Current publishing platforms weren’t built with flexibility in mind and aren’t designed to respond quickly to community needs. With PubSweet, we’ll be collaborating to create an open foundation upon which the science community can build for the future.”
The PubSweet platform’s modular architecture will provide the publishing community with a comprehensive, configurable solution for managing content across all stages of the publication process. Partners are free to select from a library of open components contributed by members of the community or to develop new components of their own. In this way, each publisher, society, or institution on the platform can create a custom solution without needing to rebuild core tools.
Kristen Ratan, Co-Founder and Executive Director of Coko, said:
“This is a transformative shift in building infrastructure. The building block architecture, collaborative product design, and open source licensing ensure that current and future needs are met across the industry.”
The platform will connect a number of exciting open source projects that facilitate a digital-first workflow, including Substance.io and Coko’s Ink. These tools will accelerate the dissemination of knowledge and provide Hindawi with added flexibility in delivering services to publishers and society partners.
Paul Peters, Hindawi’s CEO, said:
“Promoting open science tools and standards is an integral part of Hindawi’s mission. We were impressed with Coko’s ability to build a community of publishers who share a similar vision for the direction publishing should be heading. We are delighted to find a partner with both deep subject matter expertise and such visionary goals.”
Hindawi plans to deploy its PubSweet solution on select journals in 2018.
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