Bridging Digital and Publishing in the Humanities: Connecting Editorial Workflows through Open Standards

Abstract

Digital publishing in the humanities presents specific challenges that general-purpose platforms do not fully address: complex bibliographic conventions, the central role of image-text relationships, editorial workflows that remain largely manual, and a scholarly culture that has been slow to adopt integrated digital tools. This paper presents PubLink, a modular toolset designed to bridge these gaps by connecting existing systems and standards rather than replacing them. Built around an intermediate exchange layer, the platform supports article ingestion in JATS XML, bibliographic reference resolution through external APIs, IIIF image annotation with privacy controls, and automated export to OJS for publication. The design prioritises interoperability with established formats and workflows, minimizing dependency on any single platform. We discuss the architectural decisions, the practical bottlenecks they address, and the lessons learned from deploying the system in a real editorial environment, including limitations encountered with hosted OJS instances and the constraints of project-based funding.