The Copim perspective on Bibliodiversity

This is part of a short series of posts on four key Copim concepts: Community-led, Scale, Sustainability and Bibliodiversity. Each post will be linked to the others once it is published.

“Bibliodiversity is cultural diversity applied to the world of books. Echoing biodiversity, it refers to the critical diversity of products […] made available to readers”.1 Whilst biodiversity allows ecosystems to survive and thrive, bibliodiversity is necessary to ensure a healthy publishing ecosystem that serves writers and readers. At Copim, we believe that “critical diversity” in publishing’s methods and outputs must be enhanced, protected and celebrated.

But what should “bibliodiversity” look like? Since the term emerged in the 90s,2 bibliodiversity has become an ambition regularly invoked by academic publishers and other initiatives. Bibliodiversity is, for instance, mentioned eleven times in a blog post introducing JSTOR’s Path to Open funding model for OA books.3 Yet, as with any stated commitment to diversity, organisations must be ready to back up their claims to advocacy with nuanced definitions and tangible action. In its original context, bibliodiversity referred to language diversity in publishing, but the term can be expanded to embrace broader diversities in publishing cultures. At Copim then, what do we think the pursuit of bibliodiversity should encompass, how do we think it can and should be achieved, and how are we taking action to support it through our own work?

Defining bibliodiversity

Diversity in publishing cultures and organisations

At Copim, we argue that true bibliodiversity demands diversity in publishing cultures and organisations. As Lucy Barnes and Rupert Gatti have outlined:

diversity of publishers is hugely important to the monograph ecosystem – it provides for a diversity of specialisation, editorial positions, publishing objectives and (as we have witnessed with OA publishing) a fertile bed for innovation in publishing practices and outputs.4

Within a bibliodiverse publishing ecosystem, authors should be empowered to respond to the needs of their readers and communities, and to have a wide choice of avenues through which to present their research. The range of books produced by this plurality of publishing cultures will ensure that knowledge is communicated, expressed and understood in forms tailored to (and fashioned by) situated contexts around the world.

Diversity in language

Importantly, Copim strongly believes that bibliodiversity should feature and celebrate multilingualism. As Huw Grange has argued, rejecting “academia’s Anglophonic hegemony” should be a vital component of any functioning knowledge ecosystem, because publishing research in languages other than English helps to “keep locally relevant research alive, create greater impact beyond academia, and protect scholarly communication infrastructure in local languages”.5

Diversity in form

In addition, Copim argues that bibliodiversity must embrace experimental book publishing, i.e. modes of publishing that:

include experiments with the form and format of the scholarly book; with the various (multi)media through which books can be performed; and with the ways in which scholarship can be produced, disseminated, and consumed, as well as reviewed, reused, and interacted with. [… As well as] experiments that reimagine the relationalities that constitute academic writing, research, and publishing, and that speculate on what the future of the book and the humanities might look like beyond the printed codex-format as the standard publication choice (Adema et al., 2022).6

For us, bibliodiversity relies on experimentation, and the open infrastructures, relationalities, training and tools that enable authors to create works of diverse form and format. 

How Copim supports bibliodiversity

Resisting the homogenisation of academic publishing

Functioning bibliodiversity must be underpinned by a diversity of publishing cultures and practices. However, over the past decades, this diversity has been threatened by forces of commercialisation, standardisation and aggressive programmes of scaling-up and acquisition/consolidation. As Janneke Adema and Sam Moore have warned:

As academic publishing becomes more privatised and commercialised […] Many publishers look to increase the efficiency of their operations through technological scale and production processes that prioritise modularity and standardisation, meaning that the resulting publications can be reflective of a highly standardised production line approach (King, 2007).7 This process of technological scale and standardisation impacts cultures of publication, too, inhibiting differences of form, language, practice, and culture, or what is often understood as “bibliodiversity” (Giménez Toledo et al., 2019;8 Shearer et al., 20209).10 

At Copim, we resist the homogenisation of academic publishing by advocating for the benefits of “scaling small”: that is, by creating and supporting small community-led, open publishing initiatives that collaborate “to take advantage of scale while retaining their commitment to situated forms of knowledge and expression”.11 This strategy is not only desirable, it also makes economic sense in an environment in which the production of monographs displays constant returns to scale (thus supporting large numbers of publishers) while distribution and discovery systems show increasing returns to scale (thus leading to the dominance of a few large providers).12 By building non-profit, community-led infrastructure on the distribution and discovery side, Copim is helping to create a system that fosters a large number of smaller and diverse presses, while harnessing the benefits of scale.

The Open Book Collective (OBC) is one way in which Copim puts this belief into practice, by employing the “scaling small” ethos to nurture bibliodiversity. The OBC’s online platform allows libraries and other institutions to subscribe to “Supporter Programmes” and become financial supporters of a range of OA book publishers and open publishing services. The OBC allows these initiatives—many of which are too small to run such a programme by themselves—to continue to produce and disseminate OA books by and for their communities, whilst maintaining their independence and individualised processes.

Browsing the list of Supporter Programmes available on the OBC reveals the rich bibliodiversity being protected and enabled by the charity. Programmes include publishers with varying business and organisational models, geographic origins, and linguistic or disciplinary outputs. For example, the OBC’s subscribers can offer financial support to small commercial publishers such as White Horse Press or Meson Press, as well as to African Minds, a not-for-profit, open access publisher based in Cape Town, whose authors are typically African academics, and also to punctum books, an independent queer- and scholar-led, community-formed press based in the US. Many OBC supporters also subscribe to packages of programmes, for example the “University Press Package”: an international grouping of 4 university presses (Leuven University Press, LSE Press, University of London Press, University of Westminster Press) each producing texts by and for different academic communities.

Crucially, in order to resist the homogenising processes we have discussed above, smaller publishers need financial support. And, as we have discussed elsewhere, Copim believes that this financial support should be free from Book Processing Charges (BPCs), which make Open Access publication a luxury only afforded by authors in wealthier national or institutional contexts. At Copim, we create and promote BPC-free revenue models, for example Opening the Future (OTF). By adopting the OTF model, small publishers are empowered to fund their OA frontlist through a sustainable library membership model. For a small annual fee, library members get unlimited multi-user access to curated packages of a publisher’s backlist books (with perpetual access after three years). The publisher then uses membership fees to publish new titles Open Access. Under this model, Liverpool University Press have already funded nine Open Access books, and CEU Press have funded twenty.

Embracing multilingualism

Open Access publishing has been leading the field in multilingual bibliodiversity. In 2023, Grange found that only 30% of the 120,000 active, non-OA journals registered in the Ulrichsweb Global Serials Directory published in a language other than English.13 Meanwhile, 67% of the Diamond OA journals listed in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) accepted publications in at least one language other than English. Since Diamond OA is so often led by small-scale, community-focussed scholarly communities, it is perhaps no surprise that the publications it produces regularly speak directly to and from specific linguistic and cultural contexts, producing a rich multilingual range of outputs. Accordingly, several of the OBC’s publisher members publish in languages other than English, and the charity is actively working on plans to increase the geographic and linguistic range of its Supporter Programmes.

In addition, facilitating multilingual bibliodiversity requires the careful calibration of infrastructures to enable books written in national and minority languages to be distributed, discovered and read worldwide. Within the Copim community, Thoth Open Metadata is addressing these issues as a priority: ensuring that OA publishers can create, curate and disseminate high-quality metadata records in their own language, and in ways that meet the requirements of their specific national contexts.  In May 2024, Thoth released a report on the various ways in which it has integrated international metadata standards and a focus on multilingualism into its workflows and services. The report includes a description of Thoth’s commitment to:

expand Thoth’s data model to enable multilingualism through the provision of data fields for title and abstracts in multiple languages, as well as a multilingual provision of the descriptive data on contributors’ institutional affiliations.14

By prioritising global outreach and support for multilingualism, Thoth is now used by publishers from around the world, producing books in a variety of languages other than English. For example, Thoth is working closely with Latin American publishers, as discussed in a tri-lingual report on a stakeholder workshop held in April 2024.15 

Facilitating dissemination and archiving

Many major discovery platforms, particularly in the Global North, will only accept metadata from publishers within their own geographic or linguistic sphere. This can make it challenging for publishers outside of the Global North to reach readers outside their own national or linguistic context. These barriers threaten bibliodiversity and open, equitable knowledge-sharing. Thoth is working to combat this by helping publishers around the world to generate the metadata needed to access established distribution systems: a solution often achieved via collective agreements with, for example, CrossREF, OAPEN and ProjectMUSE.

Facilitating the dissemination of books is important. Many well-meaning publishers based in the Global North might pledge to increase diversity in the authors and works they publish by commissioning more authors from other regions. But, those regions are likely to already have very good presses actively publishing local authors already. What these publishers need is access to the infrastructures and platforms that allow their books to obtain broader readership and recognition. Thoth’s approach allows bibliodiversity to be achieved through facilitating localised solutions, rather than through reproducing problematic colonial relationships and appropriations.

 The Thoth Open Archiving Network (TOAN) also forms a vital part of this infrastructure. TOAN will enable small publishers from across the globe to have their valuable contributions to the scholarly record archived. This is particularly crucial for presses publishing non-Anglophone texts, which have traditionally struggled to gain access to "standard" archiving routes such as Portico.

Encouraging experimentation

The 2017 Jussieu Call for Open Science and Bibliodiversity (signed by several members of the Copim community and its partners) states that, for bibliodiversity to thrive:

experiments should be encouraged in writing practices (publishing associated data), refereeing (open peer-reviewing), content editorial services (beyond-pdf web publishing) and additional services (text mining).16

This experimentation in form, and a willingness to rethink and challenge traditional publishing workflows, is crucial for diversifying publication outputs. However, such experimentation often relies on encouragement, guidance and support: and a lack of funding, knowledge or institutional support can be barriers to authors or publishers adopting experimental practices.

Copim’s Experimental Publishing Group has been actively working to foster the conditions required for experimentation and bibliodiversity. In December 2023, Copim’s Experimental Publishing Group launched the Experimental Publishing Compendium. The Compendium offers a valuable

guide and reference for scholars, publishers, developers, librarians, and designers who want to challenge, push, and redefine the shape, form, and rationale of scholarly books. The compendium gathers and links tools, examples of experimental books, and experimental publishing practices with a focus on free and open-source software, platforms, and digital publishing tools that presses and authors can either use freely or can adapt to their research and publishing workflows.17

To complement the compendium, Copim’s Experimental Publishing Group is also hosting a series of seminars which will each showcase a specific open source tool, platform, or software. The seminars aim to give authors and publishers the knowledge and confidence to get started on their own experiments.

Furthermore, Copim’s Experimental Publishing Group also conducts experimental book pilots (3 were documented and launched under COPIM, and 3 further pilots are being conducted under Open Book Futures). The pilot projects receive feedback and mentorship from the Copim community, as well as financial support to compensate labour and other costs. These pilot projects, and their detailed documentation, work to highlight and promote experimental forms of publishing, and function as both guide and inspiration for a more bibliodiverse publishing future.18

Bibliodiversity, but not without expectations

The bibliodiversity Copim is working towards is not limitless nor without expectations. In order to become a member of the OBC, presses must first meet (and continue to meet) strict membership criteria, and to follow the missions and principles of the OBC. One condition of membership is that presses should have:

developed protocols for reviewing and developing open access books that support community and follow the highest standards for the evaluation of academic books, as agreed upon within research communities.19

Protocols for reviewing and evaluating research ensure that the books produced by a publisher can be trusted by readers and researchers, guaranteeing scholarly rigour and inviting trust. The OBC also requires the publishers it supports to provide “transparency around their mission and values” and to be willing to share “knowledge and expertise with the larger community of open access book publishers as a form of mutual support”. Both of these stipulations reflect Copim’s commitment to openness and collaboration over competition: qualities that we believe lead to more sustainable, equitable and trustworthy knowledge-sharing, and a form of bibliodiversity in which communities share and benefit.

We also believe that any bibliodiverse publishing ecosystem must be accessible to all. In the pursuit of bibliodiversity we must still develop and uphold standards that guarantee books can be read by screen readers and researchers with additional needs wherever possible. Our Accessibility Work Package is actively seeking ways to help smaller, community-led OA publishers to meet accessibility requirements and to lead the field in supporting all readers.

We think it’s important to acknowledge these expectations here. Defining boundaries, limitations and practices should be an important element of any institution’s discussion of bibliodiversity. A commitment to diversity in publishing cultures, forms and languages, should also encompass expectations of academic integrity, openness, community and accessibility.  

Header photo by Vita Maksymets on Unsplash