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At times of uncertainty, society has seen women — and women have seen themselves — as exemplifying the ‘old’ values. They have tried to hang on to what they had — keeping the home fires burning, conserving traditional attitudes, fighting to keep the familiar pattern going, weeping whilst men worked. These have been women's responses to danger and to change. Few women of the past have breasted danger or given change a nudge forward. When they have — and a glance at the short list makes this very clear — their quality has consisted not only in their personal characteristics but in their utilisation of the opportunity life gave them of acquiring the knowledge which was an essential basis for their action. The tragedy for women, and hence for society generally, has been that so few of them had the chance to acquire that knowledge. Without knowledge and the confidence that comes from it no one can plan for the future in such a way as to conserve what is of value in the past, whilst adapting to the challenge of present and making a constructive contribution to the future. So women have hitherto played little part in the evolution of new social, political and economic responses to challenging situations.

Hillcroft, despite the suspicions of the locals, is not a women's reformatory or even a rest home; but a secluded Oxford‐style college where women who have missed out educationally the first time around can open the door to further or higher education. Of the students, between the ages of 20 and 45, some admit they had difficulty in explaining to friends, family or employers that after a year's study they would have no paper qualification to flaunt, only the reputation of the college. But this over the years has proved sufficient: students armed with the confidential reports of their tutors have gained entry into colleges of education, polytechnics and universities in impressive numbers.

The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of one of the most important and controversial areas of scholarly communication: Open Access publishing and dissemination of research outputs. It identifies and discusses recent trends and future challenges for various stakeholders in delivering Open Access (OA) to the scholarly literature.

The study is based on a number of interrelated strands of evidence which make up the current discourse on OA, comprising the peer-reviewed literature, grey literature and other forms of communication (including blogs and e-mail discussion lists). It uses a large-scale textual analysis of the peer-reviewed literature since 2010 (carried out using the VOSviewer tool) as a basis for discussion of issues raised in the OA discourse.

A number of key themes are identified, including the relationship between “Green” OA (deposit in repositories) and “Gold” OA (OA journal publication), the developing evidence base associated with OA, researcher attitudes and behaviours, policy directions, management of repositories, development of journals, institutional responses and issues around impact and scholarly communication futures. It suggests that current challenges now focus on how OA can be made to work in practice, having moved on from the discussion of whether it should happen at all.

The paper provides a structured evidence-based review of major issues in the OA field, and suggests key areas for future research and policy development.