Why You Should Care about Open Access: An Open Letter to Scholarly and Scientific Authors - The Scholarly Kitchen

"If you are someone who interacts with the world of scholarly publishing primarily in your role as a researcher and/or author of scholarly or scientific articles, then there are basically two reasons for you to get involved with the open access (OA) movement:

1. If you want to encourage the transition of scholarly publishing from a primarily toll-access to a primarily (or entirely) open-access model;
2. If you have concerns about such a transition and want to have an influence on whether (and if so, how and to what degree) it happens.

Here’s the bottom line: if you want to make OA happen, then join the movement; it needs your voice, and there are a thousand ways to get involved. If you have concerns or reservations about OA — or, more specifically, about OA being made mandatory rather than voluntary — then the movement also needs to hear your voice...."