At present, about 20% of the scientific publications worldwide are freely (open-access) available (Bjork, Welling, Laakso, Majlender, Hedlund, & Guonason, 2010) and this percentage is constantly on the rise. In the Netherlands, a similar trend is visible (see Fig. 1). Why is open-access (OA) publishing important, and why will it become even more important in the coming years? This article briefly discusses these questions from three different perspectives in the Netherlands: the libraries, the funding agencies, and the authors. (Contains 2 figures and 2 notes.)