Open Access in 2020: up by 8 percentage points
SNSF-funded research produced a total of 13,938 publications in 2020, 63% of which are freely accessible. Upgrades in monitoring capabilities make the positive trend towards more Open Access (OA) more readily visible.
Our last analysis at the end of 2020 showed an OA share of 55% for 2018 and 2019. The figure for 2020 is thus 8 percentage points higher at 63%. “Hybrid Open Access” accounted for the biggest change, with its share up from 19% to 25%. This was due in part to the contracts negotiated by swissuniversities with large publishers. The increase from 21% to 25% in “Gold Open Access” is in line with the trend towards pure OA journals witnessed in the publication landscape over the past few years. Having barely changed from a share of 15% down to 14%, “Green Open Access” is recognised by the SNSF as the third route to sustainable OA.