COAR advances the vision of a global knowledge commons.

The notion of a “commons” is that certain resources are a public good and should be available to all members of society. The knowledge commons applies this notion to information and knowledge. The transition to Open Science (or Open Scholarship) and the knowledge commons means adopting new approaches to the design, funding, assessment and governance of scholarly communications.

Diversity is an extremely important characteristic of the knowledge commons. However, “bibliodiversity” has been in serious decline for decades due to an increasing concentration of infrastructures and the intense pressure on researchers to publish in high impact journals. Yet diversity in scholarly communications services and infrastructure is critical to support the different workflows, languages, scholarly products, and research topics from different research communities.

COAR has  working with other organizations to explore new pathways and models that will help nurture a diverse and inclusive knowledge commons. We recognize that fostering diversity will not happen without effort and intention and will require significant coordination in order to avoid a fragmented system or a growth in centralization. In April 2020, COAR published a “Call for Action!“, which urges the research community to actively address the issues related to declining bibliodiversity.

Below you will find the recommended actions for different groups, as well as links to related resources.

Links and Resources

Jussieu Call

Fostering Bibliodiversity: A Call for Action!

Good Practice Principles for Schol-Comm Services

See the growing list of Open Science policies that support bibliodiversity

Bibliodiversity: A Call for Action!

Funder and Institutions
  • Endorse the Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA), which recognizes the need to improve the ways in which the outputs of scholarly research are evaluated, and work with peers to develop and adopt more relevant and fair methods for assessing research
  • Fund and support local, national and regional open, interoperable infrastructures and services
Library, Library Associations, and Consortia
  • Assess levels of diversity of existing investments
  • Establish standard models and criteria for funding alternatives to “pay for access” or “pay to publish” (transactional funding models) so that libraries can more easily invest in diverse content and services, including open infrastructure
Researchers
  • Use open and community-based infrastructures and take part in their governance
  • Advocate for these infrastructures and make the case for why they should be valued with peers
Policy Makers
  • Include bibliodiversity as an underlying principle in the context of open science and open access policies. See policy examples
  • Develop frameworks that ensure scholarly communications policies, incentives and funding are aligned with, and not inhibiting, local and national research priorities and values
Infrastructure and Service Providers (Including Publishers)
  • Adopt community governance models for services
  • Use open and interoperable standards
  • Collaborate with other organizations to develop shared infrastructure
All

Related News and Updates