Part 3: Technical Workflows, Tools, and Platforms for Experimental Publishing, Interaction, and Reuse of Books | Books Contain Multitudes: Exploring Experimental Publishing (2022 update)

Steiner, T., Mars, M., Bowie, S., & Adema, J. (2022). Part 3: Technical Workflows, Tools, and Platforms for Experimental Publishing, Interaction, and Reuse of Books. In Books Contain Multitudes: Exploring Experimental Publishing (2022 update) (2nd ed.). Copim. https://doi.org/10.21428/785a6451.174760b2

For this third part of the scoping report, we will be looking at the technical developments around experimental book publishing. We will be doing so in a three-fold manner in these subsequent sections. First, instead of conducting a landscape study ourselves, we will be reviewing a number of studies and resources that have recently been released and that have tried to categorise, analyse, and map the open source publishing tools and platforms currently available to support open access (book) publishing. Our focus in this analysis will predominantly be on those tools and technologies that can support the kinds of experimental publications that we have identified in the first two parts of this scoping report. With the current version of the report updated in 2022, we have substantially expanded this third part and included segments that had previously been covered in our Promoting and Nurturing Interactions with Open Access Books: Strategies for Publishers and Authors report [undefined], while also adding new examples and information that further research has revealed over the past year.

Secondly, in section 2, we will outline a proposed methodology to analyse and categorise the currently available tools and technologies to support the creation of an online resource or Compendium for publishers and authors in year 3 of the COPIM project. This Compendium will include the technological support and workflows available to enable more experimental forms of book publishing, whilst showcasing examples and best practices for different levels of technical know-how.

Thirdly, in section 3, we will make an initial attempt at categorising a selection of tools following this proposed methodology, where we will be focusing on collaborative writing tools and on annotation tools—and the software, platforms, and workflows that support these—in first instance. The choice for these tools is driven by the pilot projects we are supporting as part of the COPIM Experimental Publishing and Reuse Work Package, which focus on several experimental practices, including collaborative writing, annotation, remix, versioning, open peer review, and computational publishing.

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