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 made open access by the publisher; journal publications are freely available on the journal website,
- Green Open Access: research outputs that are not made open access by the publisher, but that the author independently deposits in an open access repository.
On this page you will find indicators on how the policies of journals and funding agencies favour open access, and the percentage of publications (green and gold) 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. It is presented 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 and green 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:
- Number of preprints
- Articles published before peer review
- Surveys on attitudes of researchers towards Open Access by 101 innovations, Taylor and Francis, and Nature Publishing Group
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.