Panel talk given at the SSP conference in Boston about how open source has been key to enabling our company to become established and successful.

1. brian.hole@ubiquitypress.com | www.ubiquitypress.com| @ubiquitypress
Ubiquity Press: Open Access via Open Source
Brian Hole, Founder and CEO SSP, Boston, May 31st 2017

2. brian.hole@ubiquitypress.com | www.ubiquitypress.com| @ubiquitypress
To return control of publishing to universities, libraries, academic
societies and researchers, and to drive the growth of open access.
A quick introduction to Ubiquity Press
Background
Mission
 Spun out of University College London in 2012
 Researcher-led
 Strictly open access
 Grown out of the humanities
 Comprehensive approach: journals,
books, conferences, data, software, wetware…
 Moved to a distributed publishing model
in 2015
 Offices in London and Oakland

3. brian.hole@ubiquitypress.com | www.ubiquitypress.com| @ubiquitypress
Our genesis

4. brian.hole@ubiquitypress.com | www.ubiquitypress.com| @ubiquitypress
Looked for a professional, affordable platform, especially for
the humanities and developing world
Went with OS, and a lean, low-cost approach from the start
Legacy publishers not providing this, nor willing to go OS
Decided therefore to run our own
Didn’t want to build one: high risk, difficult
Cheapest commercial provider we could find was $20-30K for
one small journal
Not overcharging the research community: a core principle
Initial considerations

5. brian.hole@ubiquitypress.com | www.ubiquitypress.com| @ubiquitypress
Getting started

6. brian.hole@ubiquitypress.com | www.ubiquitypress.com| @ubiquitypress
Started having scaling issues at 10-20 journals on OJS
System was not being used to the full extent by any users, so
had some bugs and gaps
Adding features for larger-scale journals
Had to build own front-end: more professional and
competitive
Spent a lot of time fixing bugs
Scaling issues
The need to stay several versions behind to ensure platform
stability has often meant we couldn’t contribute as much
code back as we’d have liked to

7. brian.hole@ubiquitypress.com | www.ubiquitypress.com| @ubiquitypress
Scaling up

8. brian.hole@ubiquitypress.com | www.ubiquitypress.com| @ubiquitypress
and up

9. brian.hole@ubiquitypress.com | www.ubiquitypress.com| @ubiquitypress
Found not all OSS products to be as reliable as we’d hoped
Were forced to produce our own books platform to meet
customer obligations
Had to build our own back-end system to efficiently manage a
large collection of journals and other content
Scaling issues (2)
Needed to provide alternative options to customers, e.g.
different editorial systems. Not all OSS.
New architecture means we can now focus more on:
Front end
Publishing services
Innovation, not being locked in to any one system

10. brian.hole@ubiquitypress.com | www.ubiquitypress.com| @ubiquitypress
An integrated, flexible platform

11. brian.hole@ubiquitypress.com | www.ubiquitypress.com| @ubiquitypress
Committed to making our platform fully OSS in early 2018
Have started with our books platform, Rua
Some modules (e.g. Rua) can run standalone, but the greater
platform OSS code will be of more use for integrations etc.
OSS is still core to our future
Beginning an OSS book metrics project now: HIRMEOS
Maintain compatibility with key OSS systems, to prevent
client lock in
Continue integrating other OSS products, e.g. CKF PubSweet,
Editoria
Strong preference for community-maintained OSS
Key is developing a stronger internal OSS culture, and
becoming active contributors to all OSS software we use