This article explores the relation between university management and open access scholarly publishing in Sweden. Open access is generally promoted in Swedish national research policy, referring to internationally adopted recommendations on free access to knowledge by researchers and citizens alike. In principle, the conditions for universities to not only promote but also actively contribute to open access by hosting open access scholarly journals could therefore be deemed adequate. In reality, however, many universities choose to adapt only to external systems of assessment and disregard internal demands from the research community. Since hosting open access scholarly journals is not favored by existing external systems of assessment, university management that does not also act on internal demands from the research community runs the risk of becoming an obstacle rather than an enabler of open access scholarly publishing.
Keywords: Scholarly publishing; open access; university management