Back to the Future of Digital-First Production: Highlights from SSP 2022 appears on the Scholastica website.

“Wait a minute. Wait a minute Doc, are you telling me you built a time machine out of a DeLorean?”

“With those famous words from 17-year-old California teen Marty McFly, so begins the adventure that is “Back to the Future.” The iconic film, where Marty has to find a way back to 1985 after being transported to his parent’s 1955 high-school days in a time-traveling DeLorean built by scientist “Doc” Brown, reminds us we sometimes have to look to the past in order to move forward in the present.

“At the 2022 Society for Scholarly Publishing (SSP) Conference, attendees had a chance to take a hypothetical trip to the early days of digital-first article production during the panel session “‘Back to the future’ of digital-first publishing: Where we are and where we’re going.” (Unfortunately, time-traveling DeLoreans weren’t in the cards this year!)

“Moderated by Bill Kasdorf, Principal of Kasdorf & Associates, the session focused on the trajectory of single-source journal production up to now, wherein multiple article types (e.g., PDF, HTML) are generated from one code-based file. The panel featured Randy Townsend, Director of Publishing Operations at PLOS; Charles O’Connor, Business Systems Analyst at Aries Systems; and Brian Cody, CEO and Co-Founder of Scholastica. Panelists ruminated on how current single-source article production practices compare to past predictions and the best ways forward based on those learnings.

“So what were the key takeaways? We cover highlights below!…”

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