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Trends for open access to publications

Data and case studies covering access to scientific publications. Bibliometric data as well as well as data on the policies of journals and funders are available.

What information is available?

Open access to publications refers to the possibility to freely access research publications. These are divided into:

  • Gold Open Access: research outputs that are publications in an open access journal,
  • Green Open Access: research outputs that are publications in a journal that are also available in an open access repository,
  • Hybrid Open Access: research outputs that are publications in a subscription journal that are open access with a clear license,
  • Bronze Open Access: research outputs that are published in a subscription journal that are open access without a license.

On this page you will find indicators on how the policies of journals and funding agencies favour open access, and the percentage of publications (gold, green, hybrid and bronze) actually available through open access.

The indicators cover bibliometric data on publications, as well as data on funders' and journals' policies. Indicators and case studies will be updated over time.

You can download the chart and its data through the dedicated menu within each chart (top right of the image). 

For more information, see the methodology report.

Open access to publications

This data, gathered through the analysis of Scopus data and Unpaywall data, shows the percentage of open access publications by year, country and discipline.
You can click on the buttons below the chart to select the data to display.

Note: OA publications counts all open access publications regardless of type (gold, green, bronze, hybrid) only once (which excludes double counting of publications). The gold, green, bronze and hybrid publications count the maximum number of publications available for each category considered. As overlapping of publications in both categories often occurs, any summarising of these two types will include double counting of publications.

Altmetrics

The presence of open access publications in social media is capture through a set of indicators that focus on mentions to scientific publication in tweets, blogs and news media as recorded by PlumX. It also includes a trend of readership of publications based on the saving patterns of publications in the online reference manager Mendeley.
For more information on the indicators, see the updated list of open access and social media indicators.

Note: OA publications counts all open access publications regardless of type (gold, green, bronze, hybrid) only once (which excludes double counting of publications). The gold, green, bronze and hybrid publications count the maximum number of publications available for each category considered. As overlapping of publications in both categories often occurs, any summarising of these two types will include double counting of publications.

Funders' policies

This indicator presents the types of mandates established by research funders concerning open access publication and archiving, as displayed in the Sherpa Juliet database. The pie chart represents total data.

Research journal policies

This indicator presents the types of mandates established by research funders journals concerning open access archiving policies, as displayed in the Sherpa Romeo database. The pie chart represents total data.

Additional indicators

There are many other indicators to monitor open access, such as:

Case studies

You can find here a set of detailed case studies available for download, that will be updated in the course of the study and more case studies will be added in the future.

  • ORCID

    An overview on the drivers, the barriers, and the impact of (using) ORCID, a registry that provides unique identifiers for anyone who contributes to research, scholarship, and innovation.

  • As Predicted: preventing p-hacking

    An overview of an online platform for researchers to post their research designs before the studies are conducted for greater transparency both within their scientific audience, as well as the general public at large.

  • Open Metadata of Scholarly Publications

    An overview of open metadata of scholarly publications, from drivers and barriers to impact, lessons learnt and policy conclusions.

  • Utrecht University Open Science Programme

    With its Open Science Programme, Utrecht University is embarking on the biggest challenge in transitioning to open science and is creating a profound shift in the minds and hearts of all staff members in embedding open science culture and practices in their work.

  • Electronic Laboratory Notebooks (ELNs) as Key Enablers of Open Science

    Electronic Laboratory Notebooks (ELNs) are multi-functional data managers that, when properly used, can help to promote the implementation of the FAIR data principles for scientific data management and stewardship and open science that aim to make scientific data Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Re-usable.

  • Zenodo

    An open source and free repository for storing data, code, materials and any research artefact, created at CERN to foster free and easy access to scientific results, scientific data, software, and publications to all researchers to accelerate scientific processes in a non-commercial environment making it freely available for society at large.

  • Open Research in the UK

    Open research policies in the UK with respect to open access and open data.

  • Finnish Open Science and Research Initiative

    An initiative with an aim of making Finland one of the leading countries in open science and research by the year 2017. It was carried out in co-operation with ministries, research and higher education institutions and research funders.

  • Expanding Data Sources for the Measurement of Open Science

    A comparison between the outcomes of the first analysis on Open Access publishing as performed for the Open Science Monitor and the results of a study performed for another European project, Key Technology Domains (KTD).

  • The Netherlands’ Plan on Open Science

    Three key ambitions for open science: 100% open access to publications, research data made optimally suitable for reuse, and evaluation and valuation systems to recognize and reward researchers.

  • Social Science Open Access Repository

    A database of open access social science research articles.

  • Reproducibility Project

    A collaborative effort to replicate 100 psychology experiments.

  • Zenodo (2017)

    A general-purpose open access repository of research data and journal publications.