This paper explores the current state of diversity in scholarly communications, referred to as bibliodiversity, and issues a call for action for researchers, policy makers, funders, service providers, universities and libraries to work together to develop strong, community-governed infrastructures that support bibliodiversity.

Titled ‘Fostering Bibliodiversity in Scholarly Communications – A Call for Action!’, 10.5281/zenodo.3752922, the paper argues that diversity is an essential characteristic of an effective scholarly communications system. Diversity in services and platforms, funding mechanisms, and evaluation measures allow research communications to accommodate different workflows, languages, publication outputs, and research topics that support the needs of different research communities. 

However, bibliodiversity has been in decline. Far from promoting diversity, the dominant ‘ecosystem’ of scholarly publishing is characterized by the homogenization of publication formats and outlets that are largely owned by a small number of multinational publishers. 

The paper argues that the transition to open access and open science presents opportunities to reverse this decline and foster greater bibliodiversity.