paperinto

Paperinto is an open specification and rendering system designed to transform static scholarly papers into interactive, machine-readable documents. It encompasses a data model, a converter pipeline, and a rendering engine that can produce multiple output formats while preserving the scholarly structure of the source material.

The project aims to enhance accessibility, discoverability, and reusability of research outputs by embedding structured metadata, defining figure and table semantics, linking citations, and enabling interactive components such as figure galleries, data previews, and executable code blocks. The approach emphasizes interoperability with existing publishing standards and open data practices.

Core components include a declarative document format (the Paperinto document), a content extractor for source formats (PDF, LaTeX, Word), and a renderer that outputs HTML, EPUB, and JSON-LD enriched representations. The system supports citations, cross-linking, and metadata traversal to enable programmatic access by libraries and repositories.

Developed in the 2020s through a community-driven effort, Paperinto has been adopted by several research libraries and some experimental journals as a pilot workflow. Adoption remains limited compared with established publishing pipelines, in part due to tooling maturity and compatibility considerations with legacy archives.

Related concepts include semantic publishing, the JATS and TEI standards, data citation, and open science initiatives. Proponents describe Paperinto as a bridge between traditional publications and modern digital scholarship, facilitating reuse while maintaining scholarly provenance.