Single-Source Collaborative Publishing

Introduction

Book publishing involves many stakeholders and a complex set of inflexible tools and formats. Current workflows are inefficient because authors and editors cannot make changes directly to the content once it has been laid out. They are costly because creating different output formats, such as PDF, ePub, or HTML requires manual labor. Finally, new requirements such as the European directive on accessibility incur additional costs and delays.

Project Goal

The goal of the OnePub POC project is to demonstrate the feasibility and value of a book production workflow based on a set of collaborative editing tools and a single document source representing the “ground truth” of the book content and layout.

Tailored Editing Tools

The editing tools will be tailored to the needs of each stakeholder, including:

1. Author
2. Editor
3. Typesetter

These tools will feature innovative interaction techniques from the PI’s ERC project ONE.

Focus Area

The project will focus on textbooks and academic publications as its testbed because they feature some of the most stringent constraints in terms of content types and content layout. They also run on tight deadlines, emphasizing the need for an efficient process.

Development Objectives

OnePub will:

• Define a unified format for the document source.
• Create several collaborative document editors.
• Develop an open and extensible architecture so that new editors and add-ons can be added to the workflow.

Together, these developments will set the stage for a new ecosystem for the publishing industry, with a level-playing field where software companies can provide components while publishers and their service contractors can decide which components to use for their workflows.