Pop! A simplest-possible journal workflow

The 2020 launch of Pop! Public. Open. Participatory <https://popjournal.ca> . <https://popjournal.ca> by the Canadian Institute for Studies in Publishing promised a “post-digital journal of the public humanities.” Then the pandemic hit, and Pop! became a research prototype interested in establishing a “simplest possible” model, workflow, and technology stack for an OA journal in the humanities. Over the past three years, Pop! has explored and elaborated a set of possibilities that cut through much “accepted wisdom” and dogma about how journals need to be operated — from how the peer review process is handled (largely offline) to how production, metadata, and publication technologies (markdown, YAML, static site, & minimal task-specific XML) are employed. Rather than adopt — or, god forbid, develop — a journal-management CMS, Pop! aims to discern a minimum-viable feature set for a robust, scholar-led, OA journal while foregrounding a relation of care between authors, editors, reviewers, and readers.