Manifold Scholarship: Hybrid Publishing in a Print/Digital Era

This poster will present the Manifold Scholarship project ( http://manifold.umn.org ), an open-source scholarly communication and book publishing platform funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Created by the University of Minnesota Press, The GC Digital Scholarship Lab, and Cast Iron Coding, Manifold aims to present the scholarly monograph in a new networked and iterative form that still has strong ties to print.
Manifold editions bridge the space between static print and ebook forms and custom web-based projects that are individually designed and programmed to meet the unique and specific needs of a particular scholar. Manifold editions present a multi-dimensional version of the book as we know it—a base text upon which a set of media and user-interaction layers can be added along with an archive space for related research materials. The reading experience offers a set of standard characteristics and constraints so readers who read and interact with one Manifold edition know how to interact with another, no matter the publisher.
Manifold offers a potentially powerful platform for publishers who hope to offer web-based editions of their books at scale. It can ingest ePubs, the format used most often by scholarly presses in their production practices, but it can also ingest Google docs, markdown files, and Microsoft Word docs. It is thus useful not only for scholarly presses, but also for individual DH practitioners who wish to publish their work in an attractive, responsive format with options for annotating and highlighting works. Future development on the platform will enable it to be used in classrooms by groups of students, who might comment together on OER materials that have been published on a Manifold instance.
This poster will explain what Manifold is, how it works, how it integrates into existing university-press publishing workflows, and how others may begun using it on their own for a variety of publishing and pedagogical needs.