The ineffectual situation whereby publicly funded research results published in peer-reviewed journals continue to sit behind a “pay wall”, a situation made worse by continuous increases in the price of scholarly journal subscriptions, has fueled the popularity of open access (OA) in recent years. In response to what many perceive to be a dysfunctional system, individual researchers, libraries, universities, research funders, and governments have become incentivized to join the campaign for OA. Borne on the back of the digital revolution, the movement towards OA to scholarly knowledge is transforming the global research communication and dissemination system.

This report presents a summary of this series of studies. It examines the current state of the art of OA strategies to peer-review publications (Part I) and a state-of-the-art analysis of OA
strategies to scientific data (Part II). A third part of the study performs an assessment of the proportion and the number of OA papers published in peer-reviewed scientific journals. The
last part compares the results of policies and strategies across countries and explores policy implications. The study focuses on the 28 Member States of the European Union (EU-28), as well as the European Research Area (ERA), Brazil, Canada, Japan and the United States.

See the report here [PDF].

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