The discussion about Open Access has become mainstream within the science community. There are dedicated conferences available and many books and papers are focussing on the problem of how to open up science. Most discussions are about the question how to convince somebody to publish a paper under open access license or if this failed, what the concrete reasons are. Describing the situation from an ideology standpoint has become the standard and Open Access is often seen as a movement similar to the Open Source idea.
To make the situation more pleasent it would help to create a working thesis. Open Access is the not the result of individual decisions but the origins are located in technical development, namely desktop publishing, full text databases and bibliographic managers. The interesting situation is, that these tools are a new development and it can be traced back, that before these tools were available nobody was talking about electronic publishing.
Perhaps it makes sense to start the journey to open access with the desktop publishing software. Suppose somebosy has installed the MS Word or LaTeX software on his computer and tries to investigate the newly discovered features. What he will recognize fast is, that he can create academic papers and expert them into the pdf format. That means, LaTeX and MS Word was created with such an objective in mind, and it is very easy in doing so. If the user is unsure he can formulate it as a question and he will receive for sure an answer in an online forum, in which other users are explaining in detail how to expert a text file into a pdf document.
The interesting situation is, that the self created pdf file is the core element of open access publication. Open access assumes, that the manuscript is available in a digital format and of course in a standard format like pdf or postscript. Open Access won't work, if somebody has written the manuscript with a mechanical typewriter, because such document can't be uploaded into the internet.
To understand the upraising of the open access movement we have to investigate the Arxiv project in detail. The server was started in the year 1991 and the only allowed content was about mathematics, physics and computer science. In the 1990s, arxiv was the only preprint server in the internet. And the reason was, that in the humanities like literature or philosophy, computer technology was not available at this time. In the early 1990s, the Personal computer was an unusual device. It was available but it was a costly device. A typical desktop PC was running with MS-DOS and the software in that time wasn't able to expert text documents into the postscript format. On the other hand, PDF wasn't invented yet.
Open Access has become a mainstream topic in the 2000s. During that period, normal PCs were able to expert documents into the pdf format with a single mouseclick and the PC was widespread avaialble. It is not surprising, that since the 2000s the amount of published electronic documents was higher than before. Apart from mathematical papers also documents with a humanities background were published in the internet.
The new development was, that former book publishing companies were no longer needed. The combination of the internet plus a desktop publishing software allows a single person to write and publish a paper and he won't need classical libraries or linotype machines.
The revolution was, that with the book printing industry every thing remains the same. A classical academic pubiishing house works the same like 20 years ago. That means, somebody sends a manuscript to the publisher, it gets formatted in electronic format and then the book is distributed to an academic libraries. The new thing is, that nobody needs this workflow anymore. Today's situation is, that the individual can decide if he likes to publish a paper in the classical way, or if he likes to simply upload the pdf file into the internet. The simple reasons why so many electornic documents are available is because it is so easy to create them.
To understand the revolution in detail we have to focus on the key component of Open Access which is a desktop publishing software. Desktop publishing means, that the former workflow was simplified. Instead of using a book publishing house, a printing company and somebody who formats a documents, the author of a paper is charge of the entire process. Desktop publishing means basically that a single person authors the mansuscript, formats the layout, creates the images, checks the bibliographic references and experts the document as a pdf file. There is no need to send the manuscript back and forth between different stakeholders, but the document is created with a stand alone pc and a pwoerful textprocessing software.
Before the advent of desktop publishing a book was created by a team. The workflow can be traced back by analyzing the book cover. In most cases it was labeled by different stakeholders. A typical book in the 1970s was equipped with an imprint of a library. That was the physical place in which the book was located. Another imprint was made by the printing house. That was a company how created the physical book. Then, an imprint was avaialble by the translator. That means, a book was translated from one language into another language. Another imprint was available from the publishing house. That was a company how formatted a document and so on.
Basically spoken, the workflow until a book was created in the 1970s was distributed over many steps. Somebody may argue, that this complicated pipeline is equal to high quality book publishing, but the more likely reason why the workflow was so complicated was is because the technology in the 1970s was low. The desktop computer wasn't invented, and it was complicated to prepare a mansucript and print it out. The internet was missing, so a library was the only way to distribute the information to the reader.
The outdated book publication process in the 1970s, and the more recent publication workflow since the 2000s are both the result of a certain technology. If a book gets created with mechanical typewriter, linotype printing machines and printed libraries, a certain workflow is needed until a book is available. And if the book was made with LaTeX, pdf files and webservers a different workflow is needed until the book is published.