As the Public Knowledge Project (PKP) enters its third decade, it faces the responsibilities of supporting the more than 10,000 journals using its software and are dependent on PKP continuing to develop the code. In the fall of 2017, PKP, with the support of the Arnold Foundation, contracted the consulting services of BlueSky to Blueprint, with its principal Nancy Maron embarking on an exploration of PKP’s standing and prospects among a sample of those in-volved in scholarly publishing, inclu-ding current, former, and potential users of its software (Maron 2018). This paper presents BlueSky’s findings and PKP’s responses in what may serve as a lesson on the maturing of, and challenges faced by, an open source software project seeking to sustain in-creased global access to research and scholarship.

As the online scholarly landscape changes, so too must the tools used to traverse it. The Public Knowledge Project (PKP) Reading Tools provides readers a bridge from online scholarly content to a host of contextual information, to a number of discipline-specific search engines and databases, and to other tools. A lot has changed since it was originally released, such as the rise of Google Scholar as the de facto starting point for many novice (and not-so novice) researchers; the blurring line between desktop and web applications; and the increased professional use of social networking tools and websites. Recently, the University of Victoria's Electronic Textual Cultures Lab (ETCL), in cooperation with the PKP, undertook a study to determine the role and value of the existing Reading Tools, particularly in the context of Humanities Computing. The ETCL has also developed a prototype Professional Reading Environment which has been the basis for substantial analysis. Rick Kopak and Chia-Ning Chiang at the University of British Columbia (UBC) have undertaken a broad survey of the online annotation landscape, and have written a proposal for developing an annotation system for PKP software. This paper discusses how, using this research as a base and in cooperation with UBC and the PKP, the ETCL has begun a large-scale redevelopment of the PKP Reading Tools, extending the current toolset to include new social networking and research tools, as well as a robust personal annotation system, making social annotation possible between small groups and the public.

As part of the national Synergies project, the Statistics Working Group was formed to investigate statistical reporting mechanisms used by participating institutions, to research online journal-specific reporting needs, and to form a common model for statistical reporting and the sharing of usage data across Canada. The working group informally compared the statistics-gathering range of Open Journal Systems (ojs) and the Érudit Consortium publishing platform; they also surveyed Canadian and international scholarly journal stakeholders to obtain a better understanding of their needs. Respondents were asked about desired types of statistics captured, preferred groupings, preferred harvesting frequency, and their level of satisfaction with available tools. This article describes the results of the platform comparison and the survey, and it provides a set of recommendations intended for the Synergies project but applicable elsewhere.