Genetics is the science of heredity and genetic information in a cell. Genetic information pasess from cell to cell as well as from genereation to generation. Genetic information is stored in the form of either DNA or RNA in all the lining organisms. Microbial genetics is the study of genome or the genetic material of microorganisms. Most of the bacteria and viruses have RNA as the genetic material. Retroviruses are the viruses with DNA as genetic material and caused AIDS in humans. Open access to the scientific literature means the removal of barriers (including price barriers) from accessing scholarly work. There are two parallel “roads” towards open access: Open Access articles and self-archiving. Open Access articles are immediately, freely available on their Web site, a model mostly funded by charges paid by the author (usually through a research grant). The alternative for a researcher is “self-archiving” (i.e., to publish in a traditional journal, where only subscribers have immediate access, but to make the article available on their personal and/or institutional Web sites (including so-called repositories or archives)), which is a practice allowed by many scholarly journals. Open Access raises practical and policy questions for scholars, publishers, funders, and policymakers alike, including what the return on investment is when paying an article processing fee to publish in an Open Access articles, or whether investments into institutional repositories should be made and whether self-archiving should be made mandatory, as contemplated by some funders.