Nearly a decade ago I ruminated on the place open access publishing might have in political studies, and by extension International Relations and suggested that the future of open access publishing was in the hands of the academic community. As a community the academy has always utilised academic publishers of journals as external guarantors of quality and so any change in these practices is up to us; the question is have we actually chosen to move our work into the realm of open access? In this short comment, I reflect on my own experience and wider developments to suggest movement towards open access is actually slower than its champions might have hoped.