Roadmap
Introduction
The Open Manuscript Initiative (OMI) is a long-term open-source project.
Rather than following fixed deadlines, development is organised into milestones. Each milestone builds upon the previous one while preserving the project's guiding principles of openness, interoperability, and semantic authoring.
Current Status
Phase: Project Foundation
Current focus:
- Vision
- Documentation
- Governance
- Brand identity
- System architecture
- Conceptual document model
Milestone 1 — Foundation
Establish the project's identity and technical direction.
Goals
- Complete project documentation
- Define governance model
- Publish architecture specification
- Create branding kit
- Launch project website
- Establish GitHub organisation
Status: In Progress
Milestone 2 — Core Specification
Design the semantic foundations of OMI.
Goals
- Manuscript object model
- Metadata model
- Annotation model
- Citation model
- Plugin architecture
- API specification
- Review workflow specification
Status: Planned
Milestone 3 — Reference Implementation
Develop the first working prototype.
Goals
- Semantic editor
- Basic document storage
- Annotation engine
- Citation engine
- Version management
- Plugin framework
Status: Planned
Milestone 4 — Publishing
Support publication from a single semantic manuscript.
Goals
- HTML export
- PDF export
- JATS XML export
- EPUB export
- DOCX export
- Metadata generation
Status: Planned
Milestone 5 — Collaboration
Enable collaborative scholarly writing.
Goals
- Multi-user editing
- Comments
- Editorial annotations
- Review layers
- Version comparison
- Conflict resolution
Status: Planned
Milestone 6 — Integrations
Connect OMI with the scholarly ecosystem.
Planned Integrations
- Open Journal Systems (OJS)
- Open Monograph Press (OMP)
- Open Preprint Systems (OPS)
- ORCID
- Crossref
- DataCite
- Zenodo
- GitHub
Status: Planned
Milestone 7 — Artificial Intelligence
Introduce AI-assisted scholarly workflows.
Goals
- Language assistance
- Consistency checking
- Metadata suggestions
- Reference validation
- Accessibility checks
- Publishing recommendations
All AI-generated suggestions remain under human control.
Status: Planned
Milestone 8 — Stable Release
Deliver the first production-ready version of OMI.
Goals
- Stable API
- Complete documentation
- Plugin ecosystem
- International community
- Long-term maintenance plan
Status: Future
Beyond 1.0
Future directions may include:
- Research data integration
- Executable notebooks
- Interactive publications
- Semantic knowledge graphs
- Linked Open Data
- FAIR research workflows
- Institutional repositories
- Digital preservation services
Guiding Principles
Every milestone should support the core values of OMI:
- Semantic authoring
- Open standards
- Platform independence
- Accessibility
- Interoperability
- Scientific integrity
- Long-term preservation
Community
OMI is developed in the open.
The roadmap is a living document and will evolve through community discussion, contributor feedback, and practical experience.
Suggestions, proposals, and contributions are always welcome.