In a paperless world a new role for academic libraries: providing open access

Academic libraries should be considered research tools, co‐evolving with technology. The Internet has changed the way science is communicated and hence also the role of libraries. It has made it possible for researchers to provide open access (OA) (i.e. toll‐free, full‐text, online access, web‐wide) to their peer‐reviewed journal articles in two different ways: (i) by publishing in them in OA journals, and (ii) by publishing them in non‐OA journals but also self‐archiving them in their institutional OA archives. Librarians are researchers' best allies in both of these strategies. Examples of these strategies are described. We conclude that an official mandate for OA provision is necessary to accelerate its growth and thereby the growth of research usage and impact worldwide.