These developments go hand in hand with the rise of open access (OA) publishing. Though primarily motivated by the research and societal benefits that will accrue from freeing the dissemination of the research literature, open access is also needed to optimise crowd-sifting of the literature by making it accessible to everyone. But the growth of open access is also being held back by the leaden hand of the impact factor. This year has seen several significant policy developments in the US, EU and UK, but we still have a considerable way to go. In the long term open access can only work by moving to a gold ‘author pays’ model that has to be funded by monies released from subscription cancellations, but while we continue to place false value in impact factors, the publishers of high ranking journals can claim that the cost of sifting and rejecting scores of manuscripts must be borne by the system and therefore warrants exorbitant charges for gold OA.