mPach: journal publishing in HathiTrust

mPach is a package of tools being developed to provide a modular platform to enable the publication of open-access journals in the HathiTrust repository. It contains a set of modifications to the existing HathiTrust code base, plus entirely new components, that facilitate ingest, display, and discoverability of born-digital open-access journal literature in HathiTrust; all of these components are tightly coupled with the repository. mPach provides all of the tools needed to publish an open-access journal online, and it is designed to allow integration with popular journal publishing tools such as Open Journal Systems (OJS).

mPach is currently funded by the University of Michigan Library, with development by MPublishing and the Digital Library Production Service. For a timeline of the two-year project to develop mPach and updates on the development, see the project page on the HathiTrust website.

In renaming jPach to mPach we were concerned about the resonance of the old name with “JSTOR” and wanted to make absolutely clear that we are developing a robust and open publishing platform for use by publishers, not a system for archiving previously published material. Furthermore, by dropping the “j”, we are laying the foundation to extend the system’s functionality beyond journal literature at some point in the future.