Open access (OA) refers to research outputs/manuscript/research papers which are distributed online and free of cost with no barriers.

It may be combined with the addition of a Creative Commons license to promote reuse.

OA is applicable on all forms of published research output, including peer-reviewed and non peer-reviewed academic journal articles, conference papers, thesis, book chapters and monographs.

OA journal gains its fund by article a processing charge which is either paid by authors or research sponsor.

In OA publication model, neither readers nor a reader’s institution need to pay for access to articles or other resources.

Users are free to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of the articles for any non-commercial use without a subscription to the journal.

Benefits of Open Access

Some of the benefits (but not limited to) of the open access are as follows:

• The open access articles get more attention and have more research impact.
• Open access can reduce publication delays.
• Scholars are paid by research funders and/or their universities to do research; the published article is the report of the work they have done, rather than an item for commercial gain. 
• Research outcome fee to all makes a great impact socially and politically.
• Open access helps in growing the scholars.
• Librarians also lead education and outreach initiatives to faculty, administrators, and others about the benefits of open access.
• In low income countries, the open access publication literature is like a lifeline for research and other relevant fields.

  Links for different statements pertaining to Open Access

• Bethesda Statement on Open Access Publishing: http://legacy.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/bethesda.htm
• The Berlin declaration on Open Access to Scientific Knowledge: http://openaccess.mpg.de/286432/Berlin-Declaration

Open access: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_access