Experimental Publishing Compendium

tool

Scalar

Description

Enables users to assemble media from multiple sources and juxtapose them with text in a variety of ways with minimal technical expertise required. The platform also supports collaborative authoring workflows and reader commentary.

Developer

The Alliance for Networking Visual Culture

Software license

ECL-2.0 License

Software language(s)

JavaScript / PHP

Project page

https://scalar.me/anvc/

Code repository

https://github.com/anvc/scalar

Import / ingest formats

HTML, JavaScript, Java, txt, XML, PDF

Output formats

HTML

Platform status

actively maintained : last GitHub commit on 2025-09-07

Entry last updated

2024-12-01

Books

Performing Archive: Curtis + “the vanishing race”

2018, Jacqueline Wernmont, Heather Blackmore, David Kim, Ulia Popova, Beatrice Schuster, Amy Borsuk

Created as a pilot project for the Claremont Center for Digital Humanities, Performing Archive: Edward S. Curtis + ‘the vanishing...

As I Remember It: Teachings (Ɂəms tɑɁɑw) from the Life of a Sliammon Elder

2019, Elsie Paul with Davis McKenzie, Paige Raibmon, and Harmony Johnson

This media-rich, multi-path book offers a rare glimpse into the life of a Coast Salish woman and the history and lifeways of her people. It...

Reading Project: A Collaborative Analysis of William Poundstone's Project for Tachistoscope {Bottomless Pit}

2015, Jessica Pressman, Mark C. Marino, and Jeremy Douglass

Reading Project had an online companion to the print book built in ACLS Workbench for cloning, forking, and building upon the original text.

Surfacing

2016, Nicole Starosielski, Erik Loyer, and Shane Brennan

Experimental book that uses Scalar as the backend with Scalar's API feeding a custom UI. In Surfacing, you are a signal traveling across the...

Shadow Plays: Virtual Realities in an Analog World

2022, Massimo Riva

Through six case histories and eight interactive simulations, Massimo Riva explores themes of virtual travel, social surveillance, and utopian...

Constructing the Sacred: Visibility and Ritual Landscape at the Egyptian Necropolis of Saqqara

2020, Elaine A. Sullivan

The long-lived burial site of Saqqara, Egypt, has been studied for more than a century. But the site we visit today is a palimpsest, the result...

Practices

Annotating

Annotations, notes scribbled in the margins or digitally overlain, spin out from a source text, adding layers of meaning, interpretations,...

Collaborative writing

Academic publishing and reward structures are set up to reproduce individualised, liberal humanist forms of authorship. Experiments with more...

Reviewing

Evaluation of research by the scholarly community is essential to conducting and publishing research. In response to changing publication formats...