Publish OA Report: Comparison of Open Access Publishing Platform Software

The Irish government’s National Open Research Forum funds projects with the aim of improving Ireland’s open access landscape by implementing priority actions. PublishOA.ie was one of the six projects awarded funding by NORF under the 2022 Open Research Fund. The project’s overall aim is to evaluate the feasibility of establishing a diamond open access platform for journals and monographs in Ireland. As part of this evaluation, Publish OA’s technical working group was tasked with proposing a technical specification and developing a pilot for such a platform. To accomplish this, the group engaged in evaluating publishing platforms for journals and/or books. Thirteen platforms were chosen for this comparison, eleven agreed to have the information on their systems shared publicly, one asked for its information to excluded and one proved difficult to evaluate within the timeframe and was excluded. The platforms were compared against a substantial list of parameters split into 14 thematic sections, from front-end design to preservation. The results of this comparison and the proposed next steps in establishing a pilot platform are outlined in this report. A feasibility report will be drafted once the publishing community has engaged in the pilot and its needs have been elucidated