In this seventh episode of SSP's Early Career Development Podcast, co-hosts Meredith Adinolfi (Cell Press) and Sara Grimme (Digital Science) answer some questions from early career professionals about Open Access publishing. As the first of a two-part series on Open Access publishing, this episode covers some of the basics including a definition of OA, the different OA publishing models, how OA works for the author, and how metadata is involved in the "open" agenda. In part 2 (Episode 8), which will be published in June 2021, Sara and Meredith engage with Ann Michael (DeltaThink) to discuss some of the more complex aspects of Open Access.