The negotiation of a new German-wide arrangement with Elsevier and other publishers for online access to journals has stalled, as Elsevier did not agree to the terms proposed by a consortium of many German universities. Meanwhile, many of these Universities have cancelled their subscriptions with Elsevier. Scientists trying to access Elsevier journals now need their credit cards in standby to access (their) articles! Although this may be frustrating, I find that it is good news that the struggle of scientists for open access to their work is coming to a head. Many researchers for the first time start to grasp the business model behind scientific publishing! They naively thought ‘open access’ means that while working on their computers within the intranet of their universities a simple click gives them free access to any paper they want. They might now join the still small band of ‘activists’ fighting for novel publishling models. Two of those activists, Romain Brette and Björn Brembs have recently provided very useful resources for concerned researchers (So Your Institute Went Cold Turkey On Publisher X. What Now?), and a vision of the post-journal world as well as thoughtful suggestions on how we can ‘help move science to the post-journal world‘.