OA by the numbers

This list is part of the Open Access Directory.


 * This is a list of numbers measuring the status or growth of open access.
 * The format is: Number.  Date [last verified or updated].  Annotation.  Please use links whenever possible so that users can verify and update the numbers.
 * Peter Suber started this list on Wikipedia in early 2005. Wikipedians deleted it twice and then chopped it into pieces.  We restored it here on OAD, and have been expanding and updating it since 2008.
 * If these numbers don't tell the whole story, please add new numbers to tell more of the story rather than delete numbers already here.

OA journals (Gold OA)

 * 8,858 / 1,987,356. May 24, 2016. Number of peer-reviewed OA journals and articles listed in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ).
 * 1,424 (or 16%). May 24, 2016. Number of fee-based journals in the DOAJ. (Qualifications.)
 * 338 (or 3.8%). May 25, 2016. Number journals with the DOAJ Seal of Approval in the DOAJ.  (The Seal of Approval requires that a journal meet seven criteria of OA best practice.)
 * 129. May 24th, 2016. Countries represented in the DOAJ.


 * The three most-represented open licenses among journals in the DOAJ:
 * 2,971 (or 34%). May 24, 2016. Number of CC-BY licensed journals in the DOAJ.
 * 1,269 (or 14%). May 24, 2016. Number of CC-BY-NC-ND licensed journals in the DOAJ.
 * 1,058 (or 12%). May 24, 2016. Number of CC-BY-NC licensed journals in the DOAJ.


 * 53,089. May 17, 2016. Number of "free e-journals" (not all peer-reviewed) listed in EZB.


 * 22,606. May 17, 2016. Number of "free e-journals" (apparently not all peer-reviewed) listed in the Nottingham Trent University list of Free E-Journals.


 * 2,214. May 25, 2016. Number of journal publishers represented in the |&mode=simple SHERPA RoMEO database. (For these publishers, SHERPA RoMEO reports their standing policies on green OA or self-archiving.)
 * 865 (39%). May 25, 2016. Number of publishers permitting self-archiving for the preprint and postprint, according to |&mode=simple SHERPA RoMEO.
 * 739 (33%). May 25, 2016. Number of publishers permitting self-archiving for the postprint alone, |&mode=simple SHERPA RoMEO.
 * 147 (7%). May 25, 2016. Number of publishers permitting self-archiving for the preprint alone, |&mode=simple SHERPA RoMEO.
 * 463 (21%). May 25, 2016. Number of publishers not permitting self-archiving, |&mode=simple SHERPA RoMEO.
 * 79%. May 25, 2016. Percentage of publishers permitting some form of self-archiving, |&mode=simple SHERPA RoMEO.


 * 965. May 25, 2016. Number of publishers allowing unembargoed green OA for the published edition or version of record of its journal articles, according to SHERPA RoMEO. (The same page also lists those that permit embargoed green OA for the published edition, broken down by the length of the embargo.)


 * 102. February 5, 2013. Number of publishers offering hybrid OA options, according to SHERPA RoMEO. The list doesn't include a tally and users must count the entries manually.


 * 23. May 23, 2016. Number of journal declarations of independence.


 * 1,033 / 1,000. May 17, 2016. Number of society publishers of OA journals / OA journals from society publishers, according to the Societies and Open Access Research (SOAR) project catalog, compiled by Caroline Sutton, Peter Suber, and Amanda Page.


 * 435. May 17, 2016. Number of institutional members of BioMed Central.


 * 47. May 23, 2016. Number of Institutional Account Participants of the Public Library of Science.  PLoS doesn't provide this number; users have to count the institutions listed.

OA repositories (Green OA)

 * 3,090. May 23, 2016.  Number of OA repositories listed by OpenDOAR (Directory of Open Access Repositories).


 * 4,252. May 23, 2016. Number of OA repositories listed by ROAR (Registry of Open Access Repositories).


 * 3,946. February 10, 2013.  Number of OA, OAI-compliant repositories listed by OpenArchive.edu.


 * 1,500+ / 30,000,000+ records. May 18, 2016.  Numbers of OA, OAI-compliant contributors / records harvested (indexed and searched) by OAIster.


 * 1,269 / 38,354,066 records. February 10, 2012.  Numbers of OA, OAI-compliant archives / publications harvested (indexed and searched) by ScientificCommons.org.


 * 1,147,545. May 18, 2016. Number of articles on deposit at arXiv.  The number is posted on the upper left corner of the arXiv home page.
 * 139,000.000+. May 24, 2015. Number of downloads from arXiv in 2015, according to January 2016 update.
 * 105,000. May 24, 2015. Number of submissions to arXiv in 2015, according to January 2016 update.
 * 188 / 23. Number of arXiv institutional members and member countries represented, according to January 2016 update.


 * 3,900,000. May 18, 2016.  Number of free full-text articles on deposit at PubMed Central.
 * 1846. May 18, 2016. Number of journals depositing all articles in PubMed Central.
 * 323. May 18, 2016. Number of journals depositing NIH-funded articles in PubMed Central.


 * 10,000,000+. May 24, 2016. Number of books and texts available at the Internet Archive.


 * 10,851. May 24, 2016. Number of articles available in the SCOAP3 repository.


 * 5,698,645. May 23, 2016.  Total number of articles in Entrez PubMed with "Links to Full Text".


 * 1,061,068. May 23, 2016. Number of full-text articles archived at the CERN document server.
 * 166,607. May 23, 2016. Number of CERN full-text articles archived at the CERN document server.
 * 348,172. May 23, 2016. Number of published articles archived at the CERN document server.
 * 66,213. May 23, 2016. Number of CERN published articles archived at the CERN document server.
 * 615,904. May 23, 2016. Number of preprints archived at the CERN document server.
 * 21,264. May 23, 2016. Number of CERN preprints archived at the CERN document server.
 * 20,652. May 23, 2016. Number of theses archived at the CERN document server.
 * 6,371. May 23, 2016. Number of CERN theses archived at the CERN document server.
 * 6,339. May 23, 2016. Number of reports archived at the CERN document server.
 * 1,502. May 23, 2016. Number of CERN reports archived at the CERN document server.


 * 18,490. May 18, 2016. Number of full-text items on deposit at E-LIS, the Open Archive for Library and Information Studies. Count performed manually based on available numbers provided by E-LIS.


 * 93,161,843 / 4,352. May 18, 2016. Number of documents / content sources on deposit at Bielefeld Academic Search Engine.


 * 10. March 15, 2005.  Average number of minutes it takes to self-archive one article, according to Les Carr and Stevan Harnad, Keystroke Economy: A Study of the Time and Effort Involved in Self-Archiving.

OA books

 * 52,024. May 18, 2016.  Number of OA books in Project Gutenberg.


 * 62. May 23, 2016. Number of institutions contributing content to the Open Content Alliance.  The OCA doesn't provide this number; users must count the number of institutions listed.


 * 40+. May 18, 2016. Number of universities contributing content to the Google Book Search Library Project.


 * 118 / 14,365,451. May 18, 2016. Number of HathiTrust partners contributing to the number of books digitized in the HathiTrust Digital Library.


 * 151. May 17, 2016. Number of publishers of OA books listed in the [Open Access Directory].


 * 25. February 10, 2013. Number of AAUP-member publishers of OA books, according to the Spring 2012 report of the American Association of University Presses.


 * 4,662 / 154. May 18, 2016. Number of academic peer-reviewed books and participating publishers in the Directory of Open Access Books.


 * 92. January 1, 2004.  Percentage of books not generating revenues for their publishers or copyright holders, according to Denise Troll Covey, Librarian for Special Projects at Carnegie Mellon University, as quoted by Daniel Clancy, Engineering Director for the Google Book Search Project, in a talk at Stanford University on July 18, 2005.

OA policies

 * 768. May 23, 2016.  Total OA Mandates.  ROARMAP.
 * 556. May 23, 2016.  Number of research institutions mandating OA to their research output, according to ROARMAP.
 * 79. May 23, 2016.  Number of funding agencies mandating OA to the research they fund, according to ROARMAP.
 * 376. May 24, 2016. Number of policies and mandates adopted in the last 5 years (2011-2016), according to ROARMAP.
 * 476. May 24, 2016. Number of mandates and policies requiring deposit, according to ROARMAP.
 * 293. May 23, 2016. Number of Thesis Mandates, according to ROARMAP.
 * 65. May 24, 2016. Number of policy and mandate licensing conditions requiring "CC-BY or equivalent", according to ROARMAP.
 * 17. May 24, 2016. Number of funder policies and mandates including supplementary funder-dedicated APC funds, according to ROARMAP.
 * 5. May 24, 2016. Number of policies and mandates requiring Gold OA, according to ROARMAP.


 * Numbers related to the OA policy at the US National Institutes of Health (NIH):
 * 90,000. February 8, 2012. Number of peer-reviewed articles per year based on NIH-funded research and covered by the policy, according to an NIH update dated February 1, 2012.
 * 100 million. February 8, 2012. Number of dollars per year the NIH spends on page charges for grantee publications in subscription-based or non-OA journals, according to the September 11, 2008, Congressional testimony of NIH Director Elias Zerhouni (see p. 82).
 * 4 million. February 8, 2012. Number of dollars the NIH spent in Fiscal Year 2011 to implement its OA policy, according to the December 16, 2011, open letter from NIH Director Francis Collins to Rep. Joseph Pitts.
 * 100. February 18, 2013. Percentage of surveyed publishers willing to publish NIH-funded authors, according to the OAD list of publisher policies on NIH-funded authors. No surveyed publishers refuse to publish NIH-funded authors on account of its OA policy.


 * 64. May 25, 2016. Number of right-retention, university OA policies of the kind recommended in the guide to Good practices for university OA policies.


 * 55. May 25, 2016. Number of university OA policies adopted by unanimous faculty votes, according to the Open Access Directory.


 * 38. February 18, 2013.  Number of research funding agencies willing to pay article processing fees on behalf of grantees who publish in fee-based OA journals, according to BioMed Central's Summary of funding agency policies on open access.


 * 31. February 18, 2013.  Number of research funding agencies to encourage or require grantees to deposit the results of their research in OA repositories, according to BioMed Central's Summary of funding agency policies on open access.


 * 81. November 29, 2011.  Percentage of authors who would "willingly" comply with a mandate from their funder or employer to self-archive their research articles, according to Alma Swan and Sheridan Brown, Open access self-archiving: An author study.


 * 120. February 18, 2013.  Number of presidents and provosts of U.S. colleges and universities endorsing the Federal Research Public Access Act (FRPAA), which would mandate open access to publicly-funded research.  (New signatures are invited.)


 * 5,955 / 867. May 18, 2016.  Numbers of individual / institutional signatories to the Budapest Open Access Initiative.


 * 555. May 23, 2016.  Number of institutional signatories to the Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge.


 * 104. May 18, 2016.  Number of institutional members of the Alliance for Taxpayer Access.  The ATA doesn't provide this number; users have to count the institutions listed.


 * 71. February 18, 2013.  Nations with Creative Commons licenses customized for local law.  CC doesn't provide this number; users have to count the nations listed.


 * 24. June 20, 2003.  Number of participants signing the Bethesda Statement on Open Access Publishing.


 * 268. May 18, 2016. Number of signatories to the Panton Principles for Open Data in Science.


 * 548. May 18, 2016. Number of signatories to the Research Without Walls pledge "to assist in the peer review process (as a reviewer, board/committee member, chair, editor, etc.) only for conferences, journals, and other publication venues that make all accepted publications available to the public for free via the web."


 * 16,023. May 18, 2016. Number of signatories to the Cost of Knowledge pledge or petition not to support Elsevier journals.

Journal pricing crisis

 * 273 / 73. Percentage increases in journal prices (serial unit cost) / inflation rate (consumer price index) from 1986 to 2004, according to OA ARL statistics.


 * 381 / 97. Percentage increases in journal prices (serial unit cost) / inflation rate (consumer price index) from 1986 to 2009, according to TA ARL Statistics, 2008. Research library trends tables and graphs. 7-21.


 * 238-537 / 65. Updated percentage increase comparison: data from the Library Journal Annual Periodicals Price Surveys showed that the increase in scholarly journal prices from 1990 to 2008 ranged from 238% (astronomy) to 537% (general science), which is 3.7 and 8.3 times the increase in the consumer price index, respectively.  See here for details and data.


 * 56.  Percentage of research institutions in the poorest countries (per-capita gross national product of less than $1,000/year) with no current subscriptions to international journals.  According to Barbara Aronson in the New England Journal of Medicine, March 2004.
 * 34. Percent of institutions in countries in the next tier of poverty (per-capita GNP of $1,000 to $3,000/year) with no current subscriptions to international journals.  Ibid.