Since the publication of the Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI) in 2002, the number of open access articles has increased drastically over the last two decades. Yet, the growth has not been celebrated as a success. For many, the predominance of commercial publishers and gold open access articles does not bode well for a truly open access movement because, first, transformative agreements do not resolve the serial crisis concerning the limits and allocation of library budgets. Second, access to scholarly literature is largely contingent on the availability of commercial research infrastructure. And third, the gold open access model entails that authors without funding cannot make their work openly accessible, including authors who are independent, retired, on precarious contracts. Furthermore, the gold open access model can be detrimental to bibliodiversity, that is, the critical diversity of authors and scholarly works representing cultures, languages, genres, and all kinds of scholarly and scientific endeavours.
Bibliodiversity calls for an inclusive and diverse scholarly communication landscape. In this talk, we will discuss the role of library publishing in promoting and maintaining bibliodiversity by (1) providing venues for research and scholarship overlooked by traditional publishers, especially works in the humanities and humanistic social sciences; (2) maintaining institutional repositories in support of green open access and small publishers, and (3) providing an overview of the international development and challenges of library publishing. Finally, we will address why library publishing is important for addressing issues in bibliodiversity (sustainability in research) and economic sustainability of research libraries and infrastructure.