Nursing Open is an open access, pay to publish journal which is dedicated to the highest standards in open access publishing. We believe that authors should have the opportunity to make their work freely available to others to download and read, with the ensuing benefits that this entails, both for readers and authors. However, open access opens up further possibilities that are not always available to publishing by the more traditional route of pay to view: that of making your work directly available on a wide range of platforms and also promoting your work in the process. Specifically, I am referring to the use of online social media and among the possibilities are Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, blogging and podcasting. By any of these means – and many of these can be interlinked so that entries on one are automatically relayed by the other platform – you can tell the world about your work and add a link which allows people to read it at no cost.