Every year, the SciPy community shares the latest advances in open-source scientific computing through its conference proceedings. For years, these insights were confined to static PDFs, making it difficult to explore, interact, or reuse.

Since July 2024, SciPy has partnered with Curvenote to create a web-first proceedings platform. The system integrates computational notebooks and interactive figures, allowing readers to re-run methods and analyses themselves. It also streamlines submission and review, giving authors clear visibility into checks, status, and revisions. Together, these improvements enable authors, reviewers, and readers to engage with the proceedings in ways that reflect the collaborative, open nature of computational science.

SciPy’s proceedings are a vital record of progress in open-source scientific computing. But their traditional PDF format limited how insights could be shared, explored, or reused. Years of work were effectively locked in static files, stifling the ability to connect citations, methods, and results across the body of research. Discoverability was also a major hurdle - important contributions were buried in PDFs, difficult to search, and disconnected from the tools researchers rely on. The community needed a more dynamic way for readers to engage with methods, and smoother workflows for authors, reviewers, and editors.

Working with Curvenote, the SciPy Proceedings Committee built a system centered on interactivity and efficiency.

Key features included:

• Interactive research articles powered by MyST Markdown, with computational notebooks, dynamic figures, and deep-dive links.
• Streamlined workflows powered by Curvenote SCMS and driven from GitHub for submissions, automated checks, and clear metadata standards.
• Editorial tools for visibility and efficiency to manage the full process from submission to final article.
• A living archive of 19 years of proceedings migrated into a web-native environment, linking past and present research for easier discovery.
• Citable, reusable outputs with CrossRef DOIs and ORCID integrations.

The transition delivered immediate results:

• A smoother, less time-consuming process reported by authors and reviewers
• The possibility for interactive visualization research and reproducible science
• 98 new articles published between 2024-2026
• 427 total papers preserving 19 years of scientific progress
• 240 presentations uploaded to Zenodo community

For the first time, the proceedings were a place to interact with the work - read it, run it, reuse it.

Looking ahead, SciPy and Curvenote plan to:

• Expand interactivity with new tools for exploring research
• Further streamline workflows to reduce friction for authors, reviewers and editors
• Continue building proceedings system for better filtering and search that grows with the community

With Curvenote, SciPy:

• Launched a web-first proceedings platform that reflects the collaborative nature of computational science
• Made articles interactive with notebooks, dynamic figures, and methods readers can re-run and interact with directly
• Created a connected archive of 19 years of research preserved and discoverable online
• Streamlined publishing workflows for authors, reviewers, and editors
• Raised the bar for engagement, setting a new standard for how communities share and build on open science