Delivering open access: from promise to practice

An anniversary issue of Ariadne commissioned articles to predict the landscape ten years ahead. This contribution concludes that Open Access is a battleground where a ragamuffin band of academics and librarians are challenging the imperial pomp of billion dollar global companies. In those terms the contest is both unequal and unwinnable, since too much inertia is built into the system. However, as the article tries to show there are powerful drivers and change agents in place - technology; the nature of research; Google; national interest - which coupled with the sheer bloody-mindedness and persistence of the proponents of open access will lead to its growth as the dominant form of scholarly discourse. Whether that scholarly discourse will still include the journal article as we know it is a much more difficult question