California Digital Library and University of California Press are excited to announce their partnership with Collaborative Knowledge Foundation to develop Editoria, a new open source, digital-first book production platform.

Through the generous support of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the University of California Press (UCP) and the California Digital Library (CDL) have embarked on a project to build an open source platform for content and workflow management of book-length works. The goal of the project is to create a shared resource for presses and library publishers to automate book production in multiple formats using a versatile, web-based production workflow system.

UCP and CDL sought a highly flexible open source platform that could be easily adopted by other publishers. CKF began development on its PubSweet technology framework in October 2015 and early versions of key components are discoverable on GitLab. The platform is component-based, which means that it can be assembled in many different ways to meet the needs of book or journal workflows.

“We are deeply impressed by the dedication that CKF is bringing to reimagining the tools used in the production and dissemination of scholarship. The CKF methodology begins with collaboration—on product design as well as publishing process,” said Erich van Rijn, Director of Publishing Operations at the University of California Press. “The project, called Editoria, will support a robust book production system for academic publishers and library publishing programs that seek a low-cost and efficient mechanism for streamlining their book-publishing activities. The platform will be open source and able to be configured for many different publishing workflows.”

CKF, UCP and CDL are taking a collaborative approach to product design and development and will be launching a site to make this methodology transparently available to the public in the coming weeks. The Editoria project will progress through 2016 with a launch in early 2017.