On this Software Freedom Day and during its 25th anniversary, PKP takes a pause to celebrate its FOSS software and community.
This September 16th, 2023, is Software Freedom Day, an annual world-wide celebration coordinated by the Digital Freedom Foundation to raise awareness of what it means to use free software and to encourage its use.
At the same time, PKP celebrates a quarter of a century developing and maintaining free and open software with the scholarly publishing community. Since its very beginnings, inspired by the inability to share research resources publicly and openly, PKP has decidedly taken action to distribute its applications freely.
In this blog post, PKP joins in on the celebrations, and takes a moment to share a key message: PKP is and always will be dedicated to the development of free software.
What does it mean to use free software?
As the Software Freedom Day website makes clear,
To use free software is to make a political and ethical choice asserting the right to learn, and share what we learn with others.
Using free software means that the user is free to:
- Use – the user is free to run the program the way they want, for any purpose.
- Study – the user is free to learn how the program works, as well as modify it.
- Distribute – the user is free to redistribute copies for others to use.
- Modify – the user is free to share their modified versions to others.
- Access – the user is free to access the software’s source code.
In other words, users of PKP’s free software for scholarly publishing are free to use, study, distribute, modify, and access Open Journal Systems (OJS), Open Monograph Press (OPS), and Open Preprint Systems (OPS).
The latest PKP Development News Update webinar was released in August of 2023. If you would like to learn more about PKP developments and updates, please check the “Connect and Join In” section at the end of this post.
If you would like to access PKP’s open software release notes, as well as download points, they are located here:
Furthermore, if you would like to create your own plugins for OJS, OMP, and OPS, PKP shares its Plugin Guide documentation for software developers who want to extend the publishing platform to suit their needs.
PKP’s FOSS Community
PKP is a non-profit, community governed research and development project working to bring increased scholarly publishing quality, diversity, and reach to the globe via its free software.
The people behind PKP’s FOSS come not from within a single organization, but from a world-wide distribution of people committed to the project and its mission.
As in open science, PKP software is built “standing on the shoulders of giants”.
We recognise ourselves as proud members of the huge and very diverse community of communities called “Free Open Source Software” (FOSS) without which none of PKP’s developments would have been possible.
In turn, the fact that the PKP tools are free and distributed software (in contrast to closed/centralised initiatives), shields the project “by design” against possible hijacking attempts by particular interests.
PKP software is and always will be a common global public good, built in and for the community.
PKP Team and Community Governance
The globally distributed PKP Team and Community contribute their respective expertise by getting involved in the further development of the software and by providing software themselves.
In this way, they support the suitability of the software for broad use around the world in very different contexts, as highlighted in the published article “Recalibrating the scope of scholarly publishing: A modest step in a vast decolonization process.”
In order to increase diverse representation and guidance, PKP’s community includes governance supported by several committees internal and external to its institutional home as a Core Research Facility at Simon Fraser University:
- Advisory Committee
- SFU Community Advisory Committee
- Technical Committee
- Members Committee
- Code of Conduct Committee
Interest Groups
Moreover, PKP wishes to take a moment to celebrate its Interest Groups which are centered around accessibility, documentation, education, and multilingualism.
PKP’s commitment to free software extends beyond the code, to include the critical elements of community participation, education, documentation, user support, accessibility, and multilingualism. There are exciting new developments happening in these areas and PKP invites you to stay tuned for Interest Group updates.
PKP Sprints
PKP’s free software could not be developed without those who contribute to and support PKP Sprints each year – events that foster action in developing the software so that it improves and evolves with the needs of global scholarly publishing communities.
PKP Sprints invite community members representing regional and global interests in PKP’s FOSS to join in on its development and maintenance.
In turn, these Sprints allow for more in-depth discussion not usually found in online work and strengthen the bounds between community members.
The last PKP Sprint was held in Hannover, Germany, hosted by partner TIB – Leibniz Information Centre for Science and Technology, from September 11th to 13th, in advance of Software Freedom Day.
Connect and Join In
PKP free software is a community project that always will be free and open, as we want science or knowledge to be. Users are free to use, study, distribute, modify, and access PKP software – free as in freedom!
PKP invites those who are using our software to connect with us and share your news, and join in via various PKP channels.
- Join the PKP Community Forum
- Subscribe on YouTube
- Share with #SoftwareFreedomDay and #PKP25 on Mastodon
- Subscribe to the PKP Development Newsletter
- Other ways to contact PKP
Happy #SoftwareFreedomDay from PKP!
