"Back to the Future" of Digital-First Publishing: Where We Are and Where We Are Going

Since the early 2000s, scholarly communication stakeholders have been exploring the potential of XML-first production workflows to streamline digital publishing and improve metadata management across the research ecosystem. If we were to travel "back to the future," what would we find in terms of how far we've come in implementing XML-based or similar digital-first production approaches? What past predictions could we still learn from today? And where are we headed? This panel-style session will bring together scholarly publishing stakeholders to address these questions and more. The discussion will focus on: • What the state of digital-first production is, including how it compares to early projections and opportunities and challenges moving forward. • Why digital-first or single-source production is critical to realizing more rapid research dissemination and consistent, rich metadata — both key to solving global challenges. • How to create a culture of innovation to support the development of digitally-driven production workflows. || Learning Level: Applied || Speakers: Bill Kasdorf; Brian Cody; Randy Townsend; Charles O'Connor

SSP Annual Meeting Session Learning Level

Applied

Publication Date

2022 | Jun 02

44th Annual Meeting (2022)

34

“Building a More Connected Scholarly Community” The last 19+ months have been a fascinating contradiction, making us feel both painfully disconnected and also perhaps more bonded than ever before. How can we take the strengths we already possessed as a community, fold in lessons learned during the pandemic, and aim for being an even stronger, broader, and more connected community? Our Annual Meeting brings together academics, funders, librarians, publishers, service providers, technologists, and countless others with a communal interest and stake in the dissemination of scholarly information. We look forward to the 44th Annual Meeting as an opportunity to reconnect and to connect anew.

Bill Kasdorf

1

Principal, Kasdorf & Associates, LLC

Bill Kasdorf is Principal of Kasdorf & Associates, LLC, a consultancy focusing on editorial and production workflows, content modeling, standards and best practices alignment, and accessibility. He is a founding partner of Publishing Technology Partners. He is the W3C Global Publishing Evangelist and serves on the Publishing@W3C Steering Committee, Business Group, Community Group, and EPUB 3 Working Group. He co-chairs NISO’s Video & Audio Metadata and Content Profile / Linked Document Working Groups. Past President of SSP, he received SSP’s Distinguished Service Award. He is a member of BISG, IPTC, and the DAISY Consortium. Bill has written and spoken widely and serves on the editorial board of Learned Publishing. In his consulting practice, he has served publishers such as Pearson, Cengage, Kaplan, Sage, NEJM, ACP, LWW, NAP, Toronto, Taylor & Francis, Cambridge, IEEE, the Cochrane Library, Norton Education, the World Bank, the British Library, OCLC, ORCID, and the EU Publications Office.

Brian Cody

2

CEO and Founder, Scholastica

Brian Cody is CEO and Co-Founder of Scholastica, a scholarly publishing technology provider with easy-to-integrate peer review, production, and open access hosting solutions for journal programs of any size. Before starting Scholastica, Brian was doing doctoral work in sociology at the University of Chicago, and he is a self-taught Ruby on Rails programmer. He tweets at @briancody.

Charles O'Connor

1

Business Systems Analyst, Aries Systems

Charles is a technology specialist with long experience in automating production workflows in scholarly publishing. He is the designer for Aries System’s LiXuid Manuscript XML-through workflow and previously led the development of The Sheridan Group’s (now KGL) ArticleExpress. His current efforts are informed by years working in publishing as an abstract writer, indexer, copy editor, and production editor. He enjoys gardening, playing music (badly), and cross country skiing.

Randy Townsend

4

Randy Townsend, MPS, (he, him, his) is President of the Society for Scholarly Publishing (SSP) and has served in leadership positions for the Council of Science Editors, and AM&P Network’s Association Council, and has co-chaired DEIA Committees for AM&P Network and SSP. He has actively supported C4DISC and contributed to the development of many of their freely available resources. At Origin Editorial, Randy takes innovative approaches to lead and implement peer review strategies. Randy was the inaugural Editor in Chief for the GW Journal of Ethics in Publishing and is an Associate Professor of the MPS in Publishing program in the College of Professional Studies at George Washington University.