Authors : Juan Pablo Alperin, John Willinsky, Brian Owen, James MacGregor, Alec Smecher, Kevin Stranack
As the Public Knowledge Project (PKP) enters its third decade, it faces the responsibilities of supporting the more than 10,000 journals using its software and are dependent on PKP continuing to develop the code.
In the fall of 2017, PKP, with the support of the Arnold Foundation, contracted the consulting services of BlueSky to Blueprint, with its principal Nancy Maron embarking on an exploration of PKP’s standing and prospects among a sample of those in-volved in scholarly publishing, inclu-ding current, former, and potential users of its software (Maron 2018).
This paper presents BlueSky’s findings and PKP’s responses in what may serve as a lesson on the maturing of, and challenges faced by, an open source software project seeking to sustain in-creased global access to research and scholarship.