Current Work Items

The nextPub initiative began with a joint leadership meeting between IDPF (International Digital Publishing Forum) and IDEAlliance in April 2010. At this meeting an agreement was reached to coordinate the efforts of the IDPF ePub/eReader initiative for books and a parallel IDEAlliance effort for magazine, display book and journal publishers. During 2010 the nextPub charter members drafted metadata and a semantically rich XML source format for publishing to the emerging mobile tablet channel. In addition, nextPub provided input requirements on behalf of IDEAlliance publishers for the next version of the IDPF ePub Specification. Participants also outlined items for 2011.

Principles established for ongoing nextPub work include: 
  1. Build on PRISM XML (PRISM 2.1) 
  2. Build on other industry standards (HTML, XML, XHTML, CSS, ePub etc.)
  3. Employ emerging technologies (HTML5, RDFa, ePub 3.0, CSS3 etc.) 
  4. Seek broad industry collaboration (IDPF, W3C, MPA, IAB, etc.)
  5. Incubate publishing solutions for the future

Specification Status

Over the past two years the nextPub Initiative has developed a family of specifications that form a framework to enable a new publishing paradigm for design-based publications such as magazines and display books. When the nextPub Initiative began, the immediate goal was to make multi-channel publishing both simple and efficient. That is, to meet the iPad challenge. But as the Working Group explored standards and technologies, strategists began to envision monetizing content beyond today’s publishing channels. Strategists began talking about developing a “Dynamic Content Architecture” from which new publishing channels can spring by assembling and delivering new content collections based on topics pulled from a multitude of magazine titles or based on personal preferences foretold by Flipboard, Pulse or Zite models. Based on this more aggressive vision, nextPub developed a set of specifications, known as the PRISM Source Vocabulary that serves as the basis for dynamic content publishing framework.

Currently the PSV Specifications and the accompanying PRISM 3.0 Specifications are in Final Draft. Comments will be accepted throughout the summer and the specifications will be finalized and launched in the fall of 2012. Comments can be posted to Google Docs at https://docs.google.com/?pli=1&authuser=0#folders/0BzSrKOjuvTPDZGY0MWQ3MjQtNzE0OS00MjY0LWJhOTQtN2RmNjllOTNmNjFh

Ongoing Work

Work to advance nextPub PSV Specifications continues.  Current work focuses on the development of the PSV to EPUB3 Guide and the PSV Implementation Guide.  Additional work is underway to develop a PRISM Metadata Specification to cover short-form video.  Contact IDEAlliance Staff if you are interested in participation.