Nov 17
NextGen Books
We provide book production, publishing, and book sprint services – catering for books, open textbooks, and living books. Our open source software pipelines cover print-on-demand to computational publishing.
Keywords
NextGen Books is a book production and book sprint service. The service provides consultation and implementation in the areas of editorial preparation and for publishing production.
Production and publishing services can be provided as consultation and advice, for single titles or series, or for the provision of client publishing infrastructure.
Whether a book production is an open access monograph looking for ‘good practice and high impact’ digital publishing, a co-creation driven open textbooks, or a data science based publication – NextGen Books has open-source solutions.
For agile book projects we provide a complete end-to-end service package, including: organising and running effective book sprints, managing the lifecycle of living books, to the integration of open textbooks in digital teaching and learning scenarios.
We bring together best-of-class open source platforms and expertise to enable efficient productions and maximise impact with high quality metadata and interoperable formats.
- Multi-format publishing – produce your book as multi-format: print-on-demand, PDF, eBook, web, etc., and interoperable formats for efficient reuse.
- Book sprints and co-creation – we have platforms and processes covered for collaborative working – platforms such as online real-time editors to Git, or custom workflows for book sprints or the use of open peer review.
- Data science publications – we use computational publishing platforms such as Jupyter Books to bring together data visualisations, interaction, and linked open data into publication packages.
Good practice digital publishing is at the core of NextGen’s services. The benefits here mean visibility, impact, and high quality compliance for publications – such as Open Access good practice, FAIR ranking, and accessibility W3C compliance. Here is our sample checklist list of ‘digital good practice’:
- Identifiers: PIDs: Publication level; Digital object in a publication; Other entities.
- Access: Open access (OA): Publication level; OA: Linked Research Data; OA: Metadata; Institutional deposit; machine readable PDF metadata; Accessibility.
- Open Science: Software citation; Expanded roles and attribution.
- Portability: Machine readable; Interoperable formats; Open standards; Linked open data (LOD), e.g. from Wikibase and Wikidata.
- Cataloguing: Readme; Landing page etc.
Example publications:
- LIBER Citizen Science Guide - Part 1. Skills; Part 2. Infrastructures
- FORCE11 - FSCI Summer School ‘Publishing from Collections’
- FOSTER Open Science Training Handbook
Project site: https://projects.tib.eu/nextgen-books/
Platforms, services and standards used: Fidus Writer; Vivliostyle; Jupyter Notebooks; Jupyter Books; GitLab; GitHub; Wikidata; Wikibase; Thoth; RADAR4Culture; Open Book Collective; DOAB; Datacite; Zenodo; W3C CSS Paged Media; Wikibase4Research, and; Publication Manifest W3C.
Use Cases
Use Case #1 Publishing directly from a digital cultural collection using Jupyter Notebooks with Wikibase and Linked Open Data.
Context: A digital collection manager needs to make a catalogue publication - for online, app, and print - to accompany an exhibition.
User Groups:
- Collection managers;
- Curators and Digital Humanities scholars;
- Designers and web developers.
Key requirements:
- Creation of SPARQL queries from Wikibase, Linked Open Data Sources, and APIs;
- Jupyter Notebook editing;
- Creation of multi-format style templates;
- Can be extended as a way to supply content - and keep a record of what was supplied - from collection to different user communities.
Use Case #2 Editorial group producing book series using an online editor with automatic typesetting for multi-format outputs including print-on-demand.
Context: An editorial group needs to commission and review a monograph series – they want an equivalent to Google Docs but with digital sovereignty and academic features like citation management.
User Groups:
- Author, editors, and reviewers;
- Open Access press;
- Typesetting layout designers.
Key requirements:
- Use online editor;
- Create template for multi-format outputs using CSS;
- Single source metadata management;
- Git publication management.
Use Case #3 OER research group creates a book in two days using the Book Sprint co-creation method - online or in-person.
Context: A research group is tasked with creating a guide on a topic. The group members are not familiar with book production or editing.
User Groups:
- Researchers and educators;
- Participants from outside of research;
- Experts or subject specialists.
Key requirements:
- Contributors participate in co-creation process;
- Publication managers coordinate production, document management, and metadata;
- Use toolset: Fidus Writer, Git, and Thoth metadata management.
Contact
Contact Person:
Simon
Worthington
Contact Person:
Lambert
Heller
