Using a board game (‘Publishing Trap’), doctoral students, early career researchers and academics explore the impact of scholarly communications choices and discuss the role of open access in research. ‘Publishing Trap’ follows the lives of four researchers from doctoral research to their academic legacies. The players help them make informed choices along the way, such as when they sign publishing contracts and submit their work to the institutional repository. Find out how author decisions about copyright, open or closed publishing, and money, can affect research dissemination and impact.