A year ago, Ripple et al.’s “Warning to Humanity” was published (Ripple et al. 2017), reigniting debate on the importance of addressing the environmental crisis that humanity will increasingly face in the 21st century. While we fully endorse the pertinence of this initiative, we identify critical gaps which impede the capacity of this call to action in fostering the positive change that humanity needs. With our present manuscript, we provide a complementary assessment to Ripple et al.’s article for addressing the current environmental crisis, as well as some alternative paths forward. We emphasize the importance of considering historical patterns and underlying drivers of the current global socio-ecosystem, particularly in relation to social inequalities, human demography, and food production systems. Without such considerations, several of the steps proposed in the warning might be interpreted as prescriptions from a western-biased vision of our global socio-ecosystem, undermining the fundamental message of this unique initiative for achieving sustainability.

Communicating new scientific discoveries is key to human progress. Yet, this endeavor has been increasingly hindered by monetary restrictions that restrain scientists from publishing their findings and accessing other scientists’ reports. This process is further exacerbated by a large portion of publishing media owned by private companies that, in contrast with journals from scientific societies, do not reinject academic publishing benefits into the scientific community. As the academic world is not exempt from economic crises and funding restrictions, new alternatives are necessary to support a fair and economically sustainable publishing system for scientists and society as a whole. After summarizing major shortcomings of academic publishing today, we present several solutions that span the levels of the individual scientist, the scientific community, and the publisher to initiate a transformative change towards more sustainable scientific publishing. By providing a voice to the many scientists who are fundamental protagonists, yet often powerless witnesses, of the academic publishing system, as well as a roadmap for implementing solutions, we hope this initiative will go beyond sparking increased awareness and promote a shift towards more sustainable scientific publishing practices.