Open Access (OA) is a publishing model that provides an alternative to the traditional scholarly publishing model. For an initiative to be considered OA it must be free of price barriers such as paywalls, subscription costs to end users, or other charges/fees to access materials. OA resources must also be free of most kinds of permission barriers, such as copyright and licensing restrictions around (re)distribution of the materials. OA permissions may grant the user the right to copy, use, change, distribute or display the information, as long as the original author is given credit. OA does not change how information is created; rather, it changes how it is distributed. 

In a nutshell, OA attempts to make digital information freely available and easy to share. For more information go to Open at MRU.