Purpose: This paper aims to provide a systematic analysis of challenges and responses of the imminent open access-based environment so as to enable sound development of open access(OA) resource strategies.

Design/methodology/approach: A systematic and evidence-based analysis is used to discover, identify, and contextualize the factors that relate or interact. A challenge metric for the overall context and additional frameworks or alternative lists is used for the detailed analysis.

Findings: Research libraries are facing a reality confl ict between the traditional library solution and the OA solution. New resource strategies are needed but have to be based on an open knowledge infrastructure and a systematic analysis of factors and alternatives. Support for OA publishing is becoming a major task and complicated capabilities involved call for libraries to play a central role. Hybrid collection development should be in place to take full advantages of the open world while ensuring reliable and trusted retrieval, reuse, and preservation.

Research limitations: The research covers main developments in US and European countries mostly in scientific fields and for scholarly papers.

Practical implications: There are already evidences for sound OA resource policies. With the imminent dominance of OA resources, research libraries should and can set up their OA resource strategies.

Originality/value: The paper suggests a factor metric as an analysis framework, presents rationale lists and policies to support OA publishing, and proposes a hybrid collection strategy to plan for collection development, retrieval, and preservation.