Open access means free and unhindered access to scholarly research and other publications by anyone who has access to the Internet. An initiative of the 21st century (Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI)) open access is taken as an economic model made possible by the global information networks. But its antecedents can easily be seen in the print era. Many missions, both diplomatic and religious, NGOs concerned with social welfare, environmental protection and some political/ideological groups not only distribute their publications free of cost, including periodicals, but also encourage readers to copy, distribute or republish the matter without permission only by acknowledging the author and the source.

But its e-avatar focuses on research and academic literature which is a consequence of needs of new economic models of research mostly funded by Government or its agencies. Though the number of research journals has increased constantly but the libraries have always reeled under the budget cuts. Price of journals and other research publications increased manifold due to increase in production cost and high profit margins of publishers. For scholars, academicians and research institutions it seemed an exploitation of sort by profiteer publishers to get the raw material ( research output) free of cost, even by charging fee from the authors/researchers in the form of per page charges, and then to sell the same processed material in the form of publications at high prices. The underlying philosophy of OAI is that research benefits the entire humanity and should be available to all irrespective of their paying capacity. That is the only way to promote access to knowledge and its benefits to the society at large: public funded research should be freely available to public. Hence, the movement, aided by the information technology, got the momentum.