In June the MIT Press, in collaboration with the MIT Media Lab, launched the Knowledge Futures Group, a new initiative for the development and deployment of open source technologies. Staffed jointly by the Press and the Media Lab, the partnership is the first of its kind between a university press and a world-class academic lab.

The Knowledge Futures Group’s mission is to transform research publishing from a closed, sequential process into an open, community-driven one. The Group’s main objectives are to incubate and deploy open source technologies to support both rapid, open dissemination and a shared ecosystem for information review, provenance, and verification.

Among the Knowledge Future Group’s inaugural projects is PubPub, an open authoring and publishing platform that socializes the process of knowledge creation by integrating conversation, annotation, and versioning into a digital publication. Frankenbook, a free and interactive edition of Frankenstein: Annotated for Scientists, Engineers, and Creators of All Kinds (MIT Press, 2017), is one of the first books available on the platform. PubPub is also home to MIT’s Journal of Design and Science (JoDS), an open access conversation that explores timely, controversial topics in science, design, and society with a particular focus on the nuanced interactions among them.