Since 2018, Dagstuhl Publishing has been working intensively on modernising its technical publishing infrastructure. One of the first user groups to benefit from this development were the authors and editors of the LIPIcs and OASIcs conference series. For them, the submission and publication process has been significantly simplified in recent years thanks to the Dagstuhl Submission Server. At the end of 2023, the next big step was taken: the newly developed publication server DROPS went into operation.

Schloss Dagstuhl is part of the Leibniz Association and is committed to the principles and practices of open science. The aim is to make quality-checked scientific information freely and universally accessible on the internet. Accordingly, the complete portfolio of Dagstuhl Publishing on DROPS is publicly and freely available (open access). In addition, Dagstuhl Publishing plans to gradually release its self-developed software components in the area of publishing infrastructure as open source projects in order to further support the scientific community and promote the open access and open science concept.

First open source projects published in early 2024

A first step towards open source has already been taken at the beginning of 2024. The following software components have been made available in public GitHub repositories:

1. DataCite client: An API client for DataCite to register DOIs and provide Schema 4.4-compliant metadata. https://github.com/dagstuhl-publishing/datacite-client
2. LaTeX class library: A library that supports the handling of LaTeX files in the Dagstuhl Submission System, in particular the reading of metadata macros and the conversion of LaTeX to UTF-8 representation. https://github.com/dagstuhl-publishing/latex

New publications as part of the FAIRCORE4EOSC project

As part of the FAIRCORE4EOSC project, two more components have now been made available as open source:

1. SWH Archive Client: An API client for SoftwareHeritage that allows software projects from public repositories (e.g. GitHub, GitLab) to be archived in SoftwareHeritage. https://github.com/dagstuhl-publishing/swh-archive-client
2. SWH Deposit Client: Another API client for Software Heritage that enables the submission of software projects and metadata for long-term archiving. https://github.com/dagstuhl-publishing/swh-deposit-client

All of the software components mentioned above are seamlessly integrated into the Dagstuhl Publishing infrastructure. In addition, a demo server was developed to allow independent testing of the new components. This demo server was made available at https://faircore4eosc.dagstuhl.de/ as part of the project work. The source code for this demo server is also available on GitHub: https://github.com/dagstuhl-publishing/beta-faircore4eosc

Outlook

Dagstuhl Publishing plans to release further software components as open source in the future. These initiatives are intended to make it easier for smaller publishers in particular to enter the open access market and to demonstrate new ways of managing scientific information. Dagstuhl Publishing is thus setting an example of transparency and cooperation in the scientific community and contributing to the promotion of open science and sustainable knowledge exchange.