mrchristian.github.io

Curriculum Vitae

Name: Simon Worthington

DOB & place 15. Nov. 1966, Manchester UK

Nationality UK British

E-Mail: simon.worthington@tib.eu

GitHub: https://github.com/mrchristian

Mastodon: Mastodon

Twitter: \@mrchristian99

Matrix chat: @mrchristian99:matrix.org

Tel: 00 49 (0)174 877 1599

ORCID: 0000-0002-8579-9717

Languages English (native), German (A2)

Specialization: #bookliberationist - Publishing software architect

Profile

Simon’s work has been dedicated to lowering barriers to publishing and reading of scholarly works through developing free and open source software to disintermediate current publishers workflows by introducing efficiency, automation, and interoperability.

Initially in 2005 the focus of the software investigation was single source to multi-format typesetting and more recently: microservices, content real-time validation with Continuous Integration (CI), Infrastructure as code (IasC), and increasing interoperability with the implementation of frameworks such as the JATS standard — Manuscript Exchange Common Approach (MECA). See: https://www.niso.org/standards-committees/meca.

Skill sets: Software product owner → Full-stack web developer → UX/UI design research and visual design → Research team leader → Publisher & editor → Open Science & FOSS advocate → Publishing company founder & director → Serial startup founder.

Employment

2017- current: TIB – German National Library of Science and Technology

Editor-in-chief for Generation Research (https://genr.eu/) editorial platform for Open Science for the Leibniz Research Alliance, Open Science. Lead on ADA software development research project for publishing microservices software development.

2017: Akademienunion – Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities
Report co-author for project AGATE – scoping technical API networking to connect archives of all of Europe’s 600+ academies of arts & science.

2015-17 Director Research and Development, Hybrid Publishing Group, Berlin. Company founder.

Digital publishing product RnD company. Specializing in modularization of free and open source technologies such as le-tex’s XPROC based multi-format publishing stack, and Vivliostyle browser based PDF rendering. The company coordinates a network of development companies and organizations to improve engineering quality of publishing infrastructures. Member of the Börsenverein des Deutschen Buchhandels, Startup Club.

2012-15: Hybrid Publishing Consortium, Leuphana Universität

Research team leader in an EU funded business incubator with team of six for the Hybrid Publishing Consortium (HPC). The objective was to productise the open-source tech stack for multi-format scholarly publishing. A number of successful platform prototypes were developed – portfolio: https://hpg.io/portfolio.pdf.

1994-2012: Mute Publishing

Company co-founder and co-Director, publisher and editor, Director of Digital for platform delivery. Mute has published over 8.000 OA academic articles, circa 100 books and produced multiple free and open source software platforms, such as print-on-demand services, virtualized web publishing tools running over 10.000 user websites, three rounds of R&D on multi-format web typesetting platforms, online courier distribution networks and global printing & digital distribution systems, and more. See: https://metamute.org/.

2009-11: Art of Digital London

Digital strategy professional training course design and workshop delivery with IT4Arts as a ‘peer-learning-network’ for Arts Council England’s 275 funded organisations in London.

2006-10: MiniBar Lab Ventures London, co-founder and analyst – Europe’s largest social entrepreneur tech-startup network with over 7.000 members.

1998-99: Paisley-University, Scotland – developer and research in VR.

1996-97: The Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL – Computer lab developer and instructor.

1995-98: Artifice Magazine, Black Dog Publishing, London – Multimedia CD-Rom Producer / coder.

Startups (founding dates)

RunStop – 2018, microcomputer hosted publishing services; Berlin Publishing School – 2017, multi-format publishing training courses; InfoMesh Technologies UG – 2015, publishing software; Typestr – 2011, GDocs to multi-format typesetting platform; More-is-More – 2007, publishing P2P physical distribution service; Web-2-PoD – 2005, web platform for print-on-demand; OpenMute – 2002, web publishing tools virtual services platform; and YouAreHere – 2002, Freifunk delivered media publishing.

Education and qualifications

Skills

Software development: PHP/MySQL for CMSs; CMS admin, development, and maintenance — OJS, Wordpress, and Drupal; Full-stack web developer; Web design; Linux command line; Linux system admin and network management; XML/XPROC; XSLT; JATS; HTML5; SASS/CSS/Paginated CSS; R; Git/GitHub/GitLab; Jekyll/Hugo/GitHub Pages; Ruby; Javascript; APIs; CRM use; Raspberry Pi and Microcomputer OSs; and UX/UI processes.

Publishing: Editor; Copy editor and proofer; Journal and book publication management; Production manager; pricing and sales; Multi-format publishing; Metadata management; Contract writing; Art director; Distribution; and SEO and analytics.

Project management and product owner: Technical writing - manuals, guides, plans, and user docs; Agile techniques; Team learning, skilling, and knowledge retention; and Project tool sets: Trackers, CRMs, reporting, and Gantt charts.

Research: Design research; Funding application writing; Team development and management; Working group leading; Workshop management; and Event management.

Management: HR and recruiting; Management reporting and financial reporting; Business plan writing and financial projects; Sales development; Digital strategy development and monitoring; Company law, accountancy, and reporting.

Voluntary and associate positions (current)

Publications & software (selection)

See all publications, code, and projects: https://www.zotero.org/mrchristian/cv

Publications

Worthington, Simon, Lisa Nöth, and Johannes Amorosa. ‘ADA — Phases of Development: Proof of Concept to Community Handover – an Interoperable Framework for Microservices in Scholarly Publishing’, 1 August 2019. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3626810.

Research Report - Wuttke, Ulrike, Carolin Ott, Dominik Adrian, and Simon Worthington. ‘AGATE: Concept for a European Academies Internet Gateway for the Humanities and Social Sciences’. Zenodo, 22 June 2017. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.815916.

Book - Worthington, S., (2015). Book to the Future: a Manifesto for Book Liberation. s.l.: Hybrid Publishing Consortium. https://zenodo.org/record/18166.

Journal Article - Worthington, S., Zehle, S., (2016). Network Ecologies: Archive Architectures. (n.d.). Retrieved August 11, 2016, http://scalar.usc.edu/works/network-ecologies/archive-architectures.

Worthington, Simon, and Kral, Christina. ‘Traces on the Archive’. Research Repository. HPC Research Repository, 30 April 2015. https://research.consortium.io/docs/traces_on_the_archive/traces_on_the_archive.html.

Worthington, Simon, and Christina Kral. Publication Taxonomy: An Initial Guide to Academic Publishing Types, inside and beyond Academe. [S.l.]: Mute Publishing Ltd, 2014. https://research.consortium.io/docs/a_publication_taxonomy/a-publication-taxonomy.html.

Worthington, S., Broekman, P. v. M. (2014). Open education: a study in disruption. London ; New York: Rowman & Littlefield International. http://curve.coventry.ac.uk/open/items/c04530ce-d16a-46ca-b359-a905195a76cb/1/.

Worthington, S., Dynamic Publishing–New Platforms, New Readers! | Hybrid Publishing Consortium. Research plan, August 2013. http://www.consortium.io/research-plan.

Code

ADA Sprint Module: Paginated CSS and multi-format publishing MVP – Worthington, Simon, and Jakob Schumacher. ADA Sprint Module MVP: Akademie-Oeffentliches-Gesundheitswesen/Beta-Buch. HTML. 2019. Reprint, Akademie für Öffentliches Gesundheitswesen in Düsseldorf, 2019. https://github.com/akademie-oeffentliches-gesundheitswesen/Beta-Buch.

ADA – Publishing microservices for scholarly publishing. Including IasC and Kafka interface. Role: project leader. Hybrid Publishing Consortium – TIB, Endocode AG, 2018. .

TypeSetr – Google Docs multi-format typesetting. Role: Founder, product owner and development team. Hybrid Publishing Lab, Leuphana University, 2014. .

Collaborative Bibliographies – Zotero collaborative library builder. Worthington, Simon, Loraine Furter, and Experimental Media Lab. Collaborative Libraries (Bibliography) (version beta). Madrid: Role: co-developer. Hybrid Publishing Group, 2015. https://github.com/consortium/Collaborative-Libraries.

McLuhan Player – Worthington, Simon. Hybrid Lecture Player - Finally Getting the Message: McLuhan’s Media Practice, 2015. Player: https://mcluhan.consortium.io/ and source http://dx.doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19331.

Hybrid Player – reading interface to synchronise text transcript to original video. Role: system architect. Hybrid Publishing Group, 2015. https://github.com/consortium/hybrid-player.

Research Player – Amorosa, Johannes, and Simon Worthington. Research Player

https://github.com/consortium/hybrid-publishing-research.

Progressive Publishing System – automated multi-format book typesetting web service for PoD, eBooks and HTML web-book. Funded by Technology Strategy Board UK. Role: Founder and system architect. LShift Ltd & OpenMute Ltd, 2012. https://www.metamute.org/services/r-d/pps-private-beta-online-.docx-and-google-docs-conversion-to-ebook.

More is More – media distribution, book, magazine, and film international postal distribution and event management. Funded by Soros Foundation (OSI), Kennisland NL. Role: System architect. OpenMute NL, 2008.

Web2POD – print-on-demand book production & distribution web service. Funder Arts Council England. Role: system architect. OpenMute, 2005.

OMWeb – virtualized XOOPS CMS providing free and paid web publishing tools, wikis, etc. Serviced over 10.000 websites. Funded by Arts Council England. Role: founder, business dev, dev team member. OpenMute, 2004.

Metamute website and infrastructure – 25 years of continuous independent web infrastructure hosting and multiple website rebuilds in a variety of platforms.

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End, 05.12.2020 12:15:07