Open Access Journals intends to make available data and publication of scholarly information free of cost to its users. The funds for operating the same are obtained from the charge levied from authors of the manuscript. The article outlines the history and development of open access journals. It also gives a description of the various aspects and functioning of open access journals. There are a number of open-access journals that operate and charge different amounts for publishing articles. Some are of the view that publishing in open-access is not worth since it is paid by the authors and forms an obligation on the part of the publisher to publish the article. The only method the open-access journals can and have adopted for proving them wrong are maintaining an expert panel of editors and reviewers with strict reviewing policies.