Day/Time/Room
June 17, 2026 | 1:15 p.m. to 2:15 p.m. | North Ballroom
Title: Media-Neutral Publishing Enabled by the OS-APS Single-Source Workflow
Presenter: Dominik Baumgartner, Managing Director of FAU University Press, University Library at FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg
Description: For the presentation of publications—whether monographs or journal articles—there is a need for documents that look contemporary and are offered in various formats. For university presses in particular, it is crucial that these formats can be produced easily and cost-effectively. At the same time, standards must be met and legal requirements such as accessibility must be taken into account. Most of the time, however, authors submit their source texts in Word. So how can we, given these requirements, end up with attractive PDFs and usable HTML documents?
OS-APS is an open-source software for producing Diamond Open Access publications, which is already being expanded through various project grants. Its goal is to map complex publishing workflows within a single-source environment. Input formats can include Word documents or LibreOffice documents, and to a limited extent also TeX formats. Output formats include PDF, EPUB, HTML, and common XML formats. Document editing takes place in an online editor with functionalities adapted to the needs of publishers. Among the software’s special features are an accessible online viewer for HTML and JATS/BITS, freely configurable templates for journals and monographs, and alternative text support for graphics.
This contribution discusses, from the perspective of FAU University Press, the developments achieved in the BMBF-funded projects and outlines the need for such software. In addition, the use of the OS-APS software in combination with Open Journal Systems (OJS) is explained.
Title: Building Scalable Library Publishing Through Shared Infrastructure: Updates on Meru and the Next Generation Library Publishing Project
Presenters:
- Sarah Lippincott, she/her, Product Owner, Next Generation Library Publishing
- Zach Davis, he/him, Founder and CEO, Cast Iron Coding
Description: Consortial and collective library publishing models provide a critical opportunity for libraries facing growing challenges, including funding cuts, the effect of AI on many aspects of the publishing process, new accessibility regulations, and the need to demonstrate value and impact. By working together, libraries can share infrastructure, expertise, and operational costs, making it possible to sustain publishing programs that would be difficult or impossible to run alone. Collective approaches also improve resilience, reduce duplication of effort, and amplify the visibility of library-published scholarship, especially critical in a political climate where diverse perspectives are being marginalized.
To achieve the benefits of consortial publishing, shared infrastructure is essential. This session will provide updates on Meru, a unified display layer for library published content, specifically in the context of the consortial or collective publishing use case.
Between 2024 and 2025, the Next Generation Library Publishing team and Cast Iron Coding completed a major new phase of Meru development, funded by IMLS, UNC Press, and the Big Ten Academic Alliance, with a strong focus on scalability, interoperability, and usability for library publishers. A new management system now allows Meru sites to be created, updated, and scaled much more easily, reducing technical overhead for hosting and long-term maintenance. Meru’s presentation layer was redesigned so that journals, books, and collections can be displayed using flexible layouts defined by configuration rather than custom code. This makes it far simpler to introduce new publication types or adjust how content appears. Additional improvements to search, performance, and editorial administration further enhance Meru as a sustainable, library-centered publishing platform.
Participants will learn about how these new features and Meru’s flexible architecture provide a basis for building robust collective publishing programs, and how they can get involved.
Title: Platform Postmortem: Learning from Ten Years of Publishing Digital Scholarship with an Out-of-the-Box Tool
Presenter: Daniel G. Tracy, Head, Scholarly Communication and Publishing, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Description: In this presentation, I will review lessons learned about taking a publishing approach to digital scholarship after 10 years with a particularly popular platform and how we plan to move forward. I will also revisit tiered service models for library technology from the LIS literature based on our experiences and emerging trends in the field. For the past decade, as a result of perceived need and based on research on digital publishing needs in the humanities, our library publishing service has used Scalar as one of a small number of platforms we support. Chosen due to its support for multimodal writing, it has been our most popular long-form platform for research publications, including particularly for our Black Studies series, but it has posed challenges due to its aging tech stack and a gap with accessibility expectations that will soon have additional legal force. In spring of 2025, the centrally hosted version of Scalar suffered significant technical challenges, blocking all use for several months. While our local instance was not affected, we paused acceptance of new proposals using Scalar and gave a deadline to existing works in progress for final publication, moving towards an exclusively maintenance and preservation mode for our instance. Our experiences with Scalar raise considerations for successful digital scholarship web publications and related services, and this presentation will explore successes, pain points, and opportunities for moving forward after sunsetting a platform.