We’re committed to providing existing PubPub Legacy users with an equivalent experience on PubPub Platform, and we are confident we’ll be able to provide an improved experience for most Legacy users. Key improvements include:

• Innovative structural content editor: In the biggest change from PubPub Legacy, we’ve built a radically innovative new editor that allows users to dynamically compose pubs on the fly by transcluding metadata fields and entire other pubs directly into the content body. It also includes enhanced preservation and accessibility features. It’s completely unique, based on tons of research and lessons learned about how to allow users to create truly custom content formats, and we’re super excited to see what you do with it. The tradeoffs are that it is less WYSIWYG/M, so users may need to preview content before feeling confident publishing, and the editor will not initially include real-time multi-user editing or commenting.
• Flexible static site hosting: We’ll be providing an improved site template, which will be statically generated and can be hosted by PubPub or on your own third-party hosting service. Because it will be statically generated, your site will load much faster for readers and be far more resistant to traffic spikes and bots. We’ll also be providing the template as a standalone, open-source code repository, so if your team has basic technical skills you’ll be able to fork it, customize it to suit your exact design needs, and host it wherever you want. The tradeoffs are that site updates will take anywhere from a few seconds to a few minutes to be made live, and some features, like commenting and submitting, will feel less integrated to end users than the current version of PubPub Legacy.
• Improved Pub Types and Metadata: Instead of one pub type for every type of content, we’ll provide specific Pub types for journal articles, conference proceedings, and book chapters. These improved types will allow PubPub to better support the full range of metadata supported by depositing, aggregation, and archival services.
  Improved PDF and JATS generation, including automatic regeneration when any field changes, producing full JATS bundles for downstream archiving services, and producing a more academic-like PDF template, tailored to match community look and feel settings.
• Improved workflow tools, including task automation tools, the ability to configure highly customized submission and review workflows, improved discussion moderation, and new and improved, self-service integrations with common aggregation, depositing, and archiving services.
• Third-party analytics support: PubPub will support your preferred web analytics platforms, with privacy-respecting platforms given special preference. This will replace the current, limited PubPub Analytics offering, but will mean that communities will need to bring their own web analytics if they want them.
• Improved API: PubPub Platform includes a full content and workflow API, which will allow more technical teams to more easily build their own services and integrations on top of PubPub. 

Yes! The Platform sandbox is available at sandbox.pubpub.org. Dive right in or read more about how to explore the sandbox.

This fee includes access to the new Platform, migration support and forum-based support thereafter, along with access to robust documentation. 

Multiple PubPub Communities can be included under the umbrella of one hosting agreement. Partners should determine the most appropriate representative for signing and executing their hosting agreement. 

We are currently prioritizing communities that have already signed initial hosting agreements in the migration to Platform. We expect all Communities to be able to migrate via the self-service tool to Platform by July 2025.

Our plan is that migration can be initiated by you (starting in June), or by our team before then, depending on your preferences. Once the content is migrated you can QA your new site, and then switch the domain to the new site when ready. The front end of the site will be working/visible during the migration, but there would be a window of downtime on the backend while migration is taking place. 

s can prepare for migration by experimenting with the sandbox and reading through existing documentation. 

We understand that communities have varying publication timelines. The technical migration from Legacy to Platform is minimal and will be at the discretion of the community using the self-service tool. 

Yes. We understand there are financial and institutional barriers that can make migration challenging. We have extended our May 2025 deadline to January 9, 2026. After that date, archived communities will be preserved in such a way that they can be relaunched at any time a community chooses to pay a hosting fee. 

If there are financial challenges, our goal has always been to sustainably provide the PubPub Legacy Knowledge Application at low or no cost to as many communities as possible. We continue to ask that communities who can afford it pay an annual fee of $3500 for hosting and support. However, we are committed to helping any PubPub Legacy community that wants to migrate and continue to use PubPub Platform find a way to do so sustainably within their budget. Submit the PubPub Legacy to Platform Migration Form to discuss options.

Yes!

Legacy communities can make changes until October 31, 2025.

We will automatically create an archive for each community on October 31, 2025. We will host it in static storage, and point each community’s existing domain to the static HTML archive of the content, ensuring that it remains accessible to readers in perpetuity and that if the community chooses to migrate to PubPub Platform or another service in the future, they will be able to. 

Archived communities will: 

• Remain free, open, and accessible to the public
• Maintain any deposited DOIs

Archived communities will not have the ability to: 

• Create or edit Pubs, Collections, Pages, or other content
• View the Impact dashboard of a Community
   

User accounts will not be part of a community export. Users will have to be re-invited to the Community once it is created on a self-hosted Platform instance.

Exports will include information about Pubs, Discussions, Collections, Versions, Attributions, and Affiliations. 

Community admins can use the self-service export tool to download a full archive of their community, including a JSON export of all Pub, Page, Collection, and discussion data and metadata, as well as a static HTML archive of the site and copies of PDF and JATS exports for every Pub, that communities can use to migrate to other platforms as soon as the self-service tool is available.

Self-Hosting

You will be able to port the current DOIs for all the Legacy pubs you have into a self-hosted Platform Community. That will require the Community (or a journal, conference organization, or institutional sponsor) to have a Crossref membership in order for us to transfer the existing DOIs to the self-hosted version & for the Community to register DOIs moving forward.

Leaving PubPub

If KF registered DOIs for your Community and you decide to leave PubPub for another publishing platform option, we will work with you to transfer ownership of your title(s). For more information on transferring title ownership, please see Crossref’s documentation for transferring responsibility for titles and DOIs.

If you registered DOIs for your Community and you decide to leave PubPub for another publishing platform option, you will need to update the resolution URLs when content is live on your new platform. For more information on updating resolution URLs for Crossref members, please see Crossref’s documentation on updating your resolution URLs. For DataCite members, please see DataCite’s support documentation for Update a DOI or Updating DOIs with the REST API.

If you want to continue to add content to your project and the hosting fee is not feasible, please submit the PubPub Legacy to Platform Migration Form to discuss options first.

If you are committed to finding an alternative host, there are other publishing platforms that may be a better fit, depending on the needs of your project. Starting with a resource like IOI's Infra Finder, Simon Fraser University’s Mind the Gap and our Is PubPub Right for You? is a great way to get an idea of potential options.