Funders open access mandates: uneven uptake and challenging models

2026-03-03

AI Summary

This study investigates the uneven implementation, divergent models, and regional disparities in open access (OA) policies enacted by global research funding agencies. Leveraging a dataset of 26 million publications, the research combines policy text comparison with cross-regional bibliometric analysis to quantitatively assess the impact of OA policies—implemented by 36 funders across 20 countries—on the adoption rates of gold, green, hybrid, and diamond OA. It presents the first large-scale international comparison, revealing that Plan S and read-and-publish agreements have significantly advanced OA uptake in Europe, whereas regions such as Latin America exhibit low diamond OA adoption due to limited funding and infrastructural constraints, exacerbating regional inequities. Although funded articles show markedly higher OA compliance, the findings underscore persistent structural challenges impeding a globally equitable OA transition.

Technology Category

• Application Domains: Humanities & Computational Social Science
• Data Mining & Knowledge Management: Linked Open Data, Knowledge Graphs & KB Completion
• Search and Optimization: Evaluation and Analysis

Application Category

• Security and Privacy: Data transparency and provenance
• Web Mining and Content Analysis: Web data quality in the era of algorithmically-generated content
• Responsible Web: Data and user privacy-enhancing technologies for the Web

Abstract

Over the last two decades, research funders have adopted Open Access (OA) mandates, with various forms and success. While some funders emphasize gold OA through article processing charges, others favour green OA and repositories, leading to a fragmented policy landscape. Compliance with these mandates depends on several factors, including disciplinary field, monitoring, and availability of repository infrastructure. Based on 5 million papers supported by 36 funders from 20 countries, 11 million papers funded by other organisations, and 10 million papers without any funding reported, this study explores how different policies influence the adoption of OA. Findings indicate a sustained growth in OA overall, especially hybrid and gold OA, and that funded papers are more likely to be OA than unfunded papers. Those results suggest that policies such as Plan S, as well as read-and-publish agreements, have had a strong influence on OA adoption, especially among European funders. However, the global low uptake of Diamond OA and limited indexing of OA outputs in Latin American countries highlight ongoing disparities, influenced by funding constraints, journal visibility, and regional infrastructure challenges.

Problem

• Open Access
• funder mandates
• policy uptake
• research inequality
• scholarly communication

Innovation

• Open Access mandates
• Plan S
• Diamond OA
• read-and-publish agreements
• OA compliance