This year we invited our Forum Sponsors ($1k and above) to answer some questions for the blog so we can get to know them a bit better!
Sponsor name: Janeway + Fulcrum
Website: https://janewayfulcrum.olh.pub/
Q: Give us your elevator pitch – the briefest possible summary of what your organization does.
Between our two programs, we build world-leading, open-source digital publishing infrastructure to provide a sustainable platform for open access journals and media-rich books. Our in-house software engineers have developed an intuitive, agile, and responsive platform for journal hosting, migration, manuscript submission, review, copyediting, and typesetting (Janeway) and an accessible, durable, flexible, discoverable platform for book publishing (Fulcrum). We’re proud to have done this work fully within the academy.
Q: What’s something you’re working on that’s new or exciting?
Our teams are working on integrating Janeway and Fulcrum, allowing us to host audiovisual media in Fulcrum where it can be preserved on library infrastructure, and have its own metadata and DOI. This allows journals to embed media in their articles using accessible media playing technology and to avoid relying on commercial services like YouTube and Vimeo for scholarly media content.
Q: Why do you like working with library publishers?
Andy Byers, Janeway: I find working with library publishers deeply rewarding due to their alignment with values of open access and knowledge dissemination. Library publishers prioritise community impact over commercial interests, allowing for meaningful contributions to academia and society. Collaborating with library publishers offers a unique chance to contribute to a more inclusive, sustainable, and impactful scholarly ecosystem.
Jason Colman, Fulcrum: We are library publishers ourselves at Michigan Publishing, so getting a chance to collaborate more deeply with our peers is always enriching. They’re trying to solve the same problems we are and working together helps remind us that we are not alone in the challenges we face.
Q: What are you looking forward to at the Forum?
Seeing colleagues we only talk to on Zoom and Discord, of course! Our teams first met each other at the 2018 Forum in Minneapolis, so this year will be like a reunion for us.
Q: Tell us something about the people who make up your organization (If you have a small team, you could introduce them. If you have a bigger team, you could tell us a bit about what you’re like as a group or how you work together.)
The Janeway / Open Library of Humanities team are based at Birkbeck, University of London, but make up a geographically distributed network of expert bookworms, specialist software developers, and typography enthusiasts. Although we work remotely from across the UK and beyond, we’re united by our belief in the power of shared knowledge and our commitment to the open-access revolution. We also have a shared love of arts and culture, retro gaming, AI glitches, and dreadful puns, and a strong desire to make the world of academic publishing a better place.
The Fulcrum team is based at the University of Michigan Library, and most of us are located in Michigan, although we have folks based in Colorado, Ohio, New York, and Pennsylvania as well. We’re a group of librarians, technologists, and publishing experts and we’re dedicated to ensuring the broadest access to knowledge we possibly can. Our puns may be more dreadful than the Janeway team’s, but we’ll have to have a pun-off to be sure…