Vision
Rethinking Scholarly Writing
For decades, scholarly manuscripts have been created using word processors originally designed for office documents.
These applications ask authors to make typographic decisions rather than scholarly ones.
Questions such as:
- Should this text be bold?
- Which font size should be used?
- How much spacing should follow a heading?
- Should this paragraph be indented?
have little to do with scientific communication.
Researchers are experts in their disciplines—not in typography, layout, or publishing workflows.
Yet today's publishing ecosystem still expects authors to perform tasks that properly belong to editors, designers, and publishing platforms.
The result is familiar to every journal editor:
- inconsistent formatting,
- hidden formatting artifacts,
- incompatible templates,
- time-consuming cleanup,
- repeated conversions,
- and unnecessary information loss.
Meaning Before Appearance
The Open Manuscript Initiative proposes a different philosophy.
Authors should describe what a piece of content is—not how it should look.
A manuscript is not a collection of fonts and formatting.
It is a structured collection of scholarly concepts.
Examples include:
- Title
- Author
- Affiliation
- Abstract
- Keywords
- Section
- Quotation
- Figure
- Table
- Citation
- Reference
- Acknowledgement
- Funding Statement
- Data Availability Statement
These elements define the meaning of a scholarly work.
Their visual appearance should be generated automatically by the publishing platform—not manually created by the author.
Functional Writing
OMI introduces a functional manuscript model.
Instead of formatting text, authors assign meaning.
Instead of choosing fonts, they identify document elements.
Instead of creating layout, they create knowledge.
The manuscript becomes a semantic document rather than a formatted page.
By separating meaning from presentation, a single manuscript can be published in multiple formats without rewriting or manual reformatting.
Write Once. Publish Everywhere.
One OMF manuscript can generate:
- HTML
- EPUB
- JATS XML
- Crossref XML
- DataCite XML
- repository packages
- and future publishing formats
without changing the original source document.
Presentation becomes an output.
Meaning remains the source.
Open by Design
The Open Manuscript Format (OMF) is, and will always remain, an open standard.
Its specification, schemas, documentation, reference implementations, and core tools will always be freely available under open-source licenses.
Anyone may:
- implement the standard,
- build compatible software,
- create converters,
- develop plugins,
- integrate OMF into existing publishing workflows.
No permission or commercial license will ever be required to use the standard.
Sustainable Through Services
Open standards require continuous maintenance.
To ensure the long-term sustainability of the project, the Open Manuscript Initiative will offer optional professional services.
These may include:
- cloud-based validation
- workflow automation
- AI-assisted manuscript quality checks
- DOI and ORCID integration
- publishing services
- repository and archival services
- enterprise support
- managed hosting
These services extend the ecosystem.
They never restrict access to the standard itself.
Beyond a File Format
The Open Manuscript Initiative is not simply another document format.
It is a complete ecosystem for scholarly publishing.
Its long-term vision includes:
- the Open Manuscript Format (OMF)
- open schemas
- validation tools
- developer SDKs
- publishing plugins
- conversion engines
- APIs
- cloud services
- reference implementations
- documentation
- community-driven development
Together these components create a publishing workflow that is portable, interoperable, transparent, and sustainable.
Community First
Scientific communication belongs to the scholarly community.
The Open Manuscript Initiative welcomes contributions from researchers, publishers, software developers, librarians, universities, and research institutions worldwide.
Open collaboration ensures that the standard evolves according to the needs of scholarship—not the limitations of proprietary software.
Our Goal
We envision a future where researchers no longer think about formatting.
They simply write.
The manuscript understands its own structure.
Publishing systems take responsibility for presentation.
Knowledge becomes portable.
Publishing becomes interoperable.
Science becomes more open.
Write naturally.
Structure once.
Publish everywhere.