In this column the authors discuss barriers to worldwide open access to peer-reviewed journal articles online and how they might be addressed by literacy scholars. They highlight economic and ethical problems associated with the current subscription-based system for distributing articles (which sometimes works against the ideals of research and democracy for sharing knowledge). They describe how the Open Access movement in scholarship has responded to these barriers, and ways it recommends for researchers to share their articles more openly and in the interest of public good. (Contains 1 table.)