Open Access is a publishing model that allows authors, rather than publishers, to control access to their material. To access the material, other researchers would either have to subscribe to the journals themselves or access them through libraries. The rising cost of journals has made it difficult for libraries, especially at smaller institutions to continue to subscribe to important titles.
It is important to understand that open access does not equate to “free to publish”. The open access model may require the authors to pay fees to have their articles published. In scientific publishing, authors and researchers usually have grant funding but that is not always the case in other fields.