What is the future of Open Access Publishing?

“Recently, the College Research and Libraries Journal published an article called “The Inevitability of Open Access,” in which it claimed that open access journals, which publish articles that are open to the public completely free of charge, will grow significantly in the scholarly realm in the next 10 to 15 years.  In fact, David Lewis, the author of the article and dean of libraries at IUPUI, wrote that open access publishing ‘could account for 50% of the scholarly journal articles sometime between 2017 and 2021, and 90% of articles as soon as 2020 and more conservatively by 2025... With our recent announcements about our partnership with the University of North Carolina Greensboro and  Simon Fraser University and our exciting announcement last week about expanding our open access options to include the fields of Medicine and Engineering, we hope it is clear that Open Access publishing is a priority for SAGE. For those of you who may wonder how the content of SAGE Open Journals compares to the content of other SAGE Journals, we just want to remind you that all articles published in each of the four open access journals are rigorously peer-reviewed by leading experts in relevant fields. In fact, because our open access journals do not have content limits due to page budgets or specific themes, articles are accepted based solely on the scientific and methodological validity of the research. Once published, full texts of the articles are available free to the public, without subscription. So while we recognize the undeniable value of our traditionally-published journals, we agree with David Lewis when he states, ‘We should do everything we can to encourage and support [open access] growth, because in the end it…will make our world better.’"