Open access (OA) to academic research outputs is crucial if we are to find solutions to global societal challenges, such as growing inequality, climate change and the current health crisis. Enabling equal access to knowledge can help bring social justice, however, this depends on the ‘route’ that is taken for transitioning to ubiquitous OA publishing. In this white paper, we outline several important barriers the current academic publishing landscape presents to the transition to sustainable – but also just – open access publishing. We then propose a new route to open access: Quartz Open Access Quartz OA is an ecosystem that facilitates exchanges of resources and funding among the open access community and a new channel to fund and support independent open access publishing. This paper presents our vision for a more just, sustainable and independent academic publishing; it outlines the values we build upon and the gevrnance model we propose. This white paper is also a call for the academic community to get involved in this initiative and start building a global Quartz OA community.