The increasing momentum towards opening up various dimensions of society is discussed in this article, and the authors consider whether ‘open’ is now an unstoppable force for change in the world. Various topics within research communication, such as open access (OA) and post-publication peer review (PPPR), are considered from the perspective of the authors as participants in the scholarly communication community of more than 20 years’ standing, with both for- and non-profit credentials.

The authors explore how harnessing the wisdom of the crowd in rating everyday services manifests itself by improving our ability to make choices in our daily lives. They explain how this network effect can be applied to scholarly communication and how it provided some of the inspiration behind the launch of ScienceOpen, the research and OA publishing network, in May 2014. This publishing platform is then described as an example of democratizing publishing. The increasing importance of software development in publishing and the need for stand-alone expertise in this space (as opposed to a publisher-centric approach) is also discussed.

Finally, the authors consider the role that the impact factor and the promotion/tenure system play in holding back progress in scholarly communication and they highlight the efforts of early career researchers to break the stalemate by taking ‘open’ pledges.