The paper gives an account of the origin and development of the Open Access Initiative and
explains the concept of open access publishing. It also highlight various facets related to the open access
scholarly publishing in the field of Media & Communication on the basis of data collected from the most
authoritative online directory of open access journals, i.e., Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ).
The DOAJ covers 8492 open access journals of which 106 journals are listed under the subject heading
‘Media & Communication’. Most of the open access journals in Media & Communication were started
during late 1990s and are being published from 34 different countries on 6 continents in 13 different
languages. More than 80 % open access journals are being published by the not-for-profit sector such
as academic institutions and universities.