OA by the numbers

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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)

  • 2,214. May 25, 2016. Number of journal publishers represented in the 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 SHERPA RoMEO.
    • 739 (33%). May 25, 2016. Number of publishers permitting self-archiving for the postprint alone, SHERPA RoMEO.
    • 147 (7%). May 25, 2016. Number of publishers permitting self-archiving for the preprint alone, SHERPA RoMEO.
    • 463 (21%). May 25, 2016. Number of publishers not permitting self-archiving, SHERPA RoMEO.
    • 79%. May 25, 2016. Percentage of publishers permitting some form of self-archiving, 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.
  • 100,000. Number of APC-funded OA journals published in 2010, according to study by Solomon and Björk.
    • 906 / 904. Average APC represented in U.S. dollars for journals and articles published in 2010, according to study completed by Solomon and Björk.
    • 8 / 3,900. Minimum and maximum APC for journals and articles published in 2010 identified in study by Solomon and Björk, represented in US dollars.
      • 1,345. Average APC for commercial publishers represented in USD, according to study by Solomon and Björk.
      • 461. Average APC for "scientific societies and universities" represented in US dollars, shown in study by Solomon and Björk.
      • 246. Average APC for "universities or university departments" represented in US dollars, according to study by Solomon and Björk.
    • ≈ 25%. Approximate percent of "articles published were in journals charging less than 200 USD", shown in study by Solomon and Björk.
  • Sources of funds to pay APCs at APC-based journals, according to the Study of Open Access Publishing (SOAP) project, January 2011, Table 4.
    • 59%. January 2011. Percentage of APCs paid by funding agencies (author's funder).
    • 24%. January 2011. Percentage of APCs paid by universities (author's employer).
    • 12%. January 2011. Percentage of APCs paid by authors themselves.
  • 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.

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.
  • 10,851. 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".

OA books

OA policies

  • 768. May 23, 2016. Total OA Mandates, according to 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.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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 statement, pledging to refrain from (some combination of) writing, refereeing, or editing for 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.