Although there are effective methods available to authors for providing open access to their work,more than half are still not doing so and provision in China is poorer than in many other countries.There are a number of issues and concerns that dissuade au- thors from making their work open access:some are still unaware of the concept and of the increased visibility and impact that open ac- cess brings;many are unfamiliar with open access journals and how they work;many are uninformed about self-archiving and for some of those who are aware of the possibility of providing open access by this means,concerns about copyright and technical issues remain. Yet all these worries can be addressed with simple facts that reassure and encourage authors to adopt open access to benefit themselves, their research and their teaching.There is also a wealth of resources now available to authors that provide information and advice on open access and its effects.As institutions and research funders,both with a strong interest in maximising the visibility and impact of research they support,begin to develop formal policies on open access,models for its provision are emerging.The optimal model is a network of institution-based open access repositories from which content can be harvested by open access search engines(the basic‘no frills’variant)or by service providers who add functionality or selectivity to provide users with value-enhanced products. Although there are effective methods available to authors for providing open access to their work, more than half are still not doing so and provision in China is poorer than in many other countries.There are a number of issues and concerns that dissuade au- thors from making their work open access: some are still unaware of the concept and of the increased visibility and impact that open ac- cess brings; many are unfamiliar with open access journals and how they work; many are uninformed about self-archiving and for some of those who are aware of the possibility of providing open access by this means, concerns about copyright and technical issues remain. Yet all these worries can be addressed with simple facts that reassure and encourage authors to adopt open access to benefit themselves, their research and their teaching.There is also a wealth of resources now available to authors that provide information and advice on open access and its effects. As institutions and research funders, both with a strong interest in maximizing the visibility and impact of research they support, begin to develop formal policies on open access, models for its provision are emerging. optimality is a network of institution-based open access repositories from which content can be harvested by open access search engines (the basic’no frills’variant) or by service providers who add functionality or selectivity to provide users with value-enhanced products.