Dear Community,

Welcome to the Publication Taxonomy an exploratory listing project by the Hybrid Publishing Consortium.

The Hybrid Publishing Consortium is the technology research arm of the Hybrid Publishing Lab and is made up of a team of six interdisciplinary researchers, developing open source software for multi-format publishing. Creating an exploratory taxonomy of publication types plays a role in our software design process helping us understand the boundaries of publishing forms.

When the Consortium started to compile a list of the various types of scholarly publications we had to keep in mind the challenge of a continuously changing technology landscape. This meant moving to a so called post-digital condition (although a contested term)–involving parallel usage of various media types, a new collaborative paradigm, a proliferation of tool sets and open access academic publishing.

To give some limits around what we define as a publication we agreed on three very open parameters–(1) the act of making a document public, (2) the involvement of textuality, and (3) a scholarly/academic orientation.

Acceleration best describes the overall condition for both the development of publishing and the shaping of the emergent post-digital scholar, blurring the distinction between the publishers workflow and the scholars textual creation. The renegotiation of new roles for publisher and scholar is one area where new publishing types emerge, especially where the act of reading becomes a new textual creation. An instability arises in the scholarly workflow and how the scholar is organizing and adjusting her/his work steps within the post-digital condition. It also means an expansion of the very definition what constitutes a publication.

To add to the post-digital scholars’ palette of opportunities we introduce dynamic publishing, an industry term to describe digital automated processes in publishing–distribution, rights management and reading analytics–to name a few areas.

Below you’ll find a list compiled of various publication types that can currently be found on the publishing horizon. We tried to sort these established & emerging types and find a common definition for each. We did this to gain an overview of the forms available and the purposes they serve. We were and are looking at classic forms of publishing as well as hybrid forms, expanding to publications with enhanced options of interaction and engagement, investigating the potential of modularity, intermixing printed matter and digital media.

We came up with a list, parted into two sections:

PART 1 - conventional academic publications

PART 2 - unconventional, experimental types, appearing within and outside of academia.

The second part is to create a pool of possible directions for the publishing domain. As you can see this list not comprehensive. Therefore please feel invited to share your comments and types of publications you think relevant to include. For a better understanding of the options we'd greatly appreciate if you added an example, in form of a link or description.