Abstract
Open Access is a movement to reduce financial or status-based barriers to accessing knowledge. The movement has emerged in the wake of the digital transformation of scholarly publishing and the advent of the internet. Over the course of 30 years open access publications are estimated to represent at least half of all scholarly journal articles published. Dramatic changes are taking place in the higher education sector that involve myriad challenges around financial models, budgets, demographics, technology, pedagogy, research impact and public credibility. A robust and expansive open access landscape offers the opportunity for resilience and sustainability in a core component of higher education: the production, dissemination, and preservation of knowledge.