Abstract In the existing scholarly publishing empire, authors give away their valued research work to various commercial journals, thereby restricting free accessibility to the published useful work. Triggered by the gargantuan promise of the internet, the self-archiving principle is a new and revolutionary concept which potentially lets all research work become freely available online. It involves deposition of research documents at a publicly accessible website, and its proponents see the initiative as a means to set entire author works free of all access and impact barriers. This review briefly discusses the allied concepts, the course and implications of the initiative.