The Open Access movement started as an answer to the ‘journals crisis’ and has developed into worldwide initiatives to speed up and renew the process of scholarly communication and to improve the access to research publications and data. Open Access is currently being promoted by researchers and librarians, but also by university boards, national governments, funding bodies and the European Commission. The development of University mandates, Open Access Journals, institutional and subject repositories will be discussed. The focus will be on the developments in Europe and on the involvement and role of research libraries. Experiences with repositories learn that it is important that the deposit of publications is integrated in the workflow of the researcher and that repositories are seamlessly linked with the research information system. It is a great challenge to renovate the process of scholarly communication in such a way that open access can be provided to scholarly information, with maintaining the principles of quality control, certification and peer review. Research communities can play a key role in the development of new models and the creation of sustainable solutions, but leadership of university managers is essential to pave the way and to create the conditions for change.