The Role of Institutional Policies in Advancing Open Access
Blog post by Ophélie Wang
On 30 January 2025, the French Ministry of Research published its annual “Open Science Barometer“. This study, based on 160,000 French scientific articles with a Crossref DOI published in 2023, showed that 67% were available in Open Access (OA) by December 2024. While this represents only a slight improvement compared to 2023 (+1,5 point), the long-term trend is clear: since the first Barometer in 2018, Open Access availability has increased by 29 percentage points – with the most significant growth between 2018 and 2022.
This steady rise highlights the impact of:
- national legislation: in this case, the 2016 French Secondary Publishing Rights (SPR) legislation; and,
- institutional Open Science (OS) support policies: France has a National Plan for OS since 2018.
Tracking Open Access Growth Over Time
The Barometer tracks OA rates by publication year, revealing the often significant delay between an article’s initial publication and its availability in OA. For instance, among articles published in 2017:
- 38% were available in OA by 2018;
- 50% by 2020; and,
- 53% by 2024.
This delay can be explained by the embargo period imposed by the SPR legislation, as well as by publishers’ shifting paywall policies.
These findings highlight the continued need for legislative progress to achieve immediate OA for most scientific publications!
Institutional Open Science Policies on the Rise
Finally, for the first time, the 2024 Barometer includes data on institutional OS policies adopted by French universitiesshowing that 61 public institutions (universities, research centers, etc.) have adopted an OS policy.
This marks a significant increase since the introduction of the 2018 national OS plan, reinforcing the notion that national OS policies strongly influence local institutional practices.
Addressing Copyright Challenges in Institutional Policies
While the rising number of institutional OS policies can be seen as a positive development for OA-supporters, a closer analysis reveals key areas for improvement.
Those institutional OS policies all set a minimum objective of encouraging their researchers to publish in OA. However, most do not address the legal, including the copyright-related issues that can hinder this objective.
A systematic review of 44 institutional OS policies listed by the Ministry identifies that:
- 14 policies (less than a third) mentioned copyright concerns faced by scientific authors, such as transfer of rights, rights retention or open licensing, and in some cases, only briefly.
- only 10 policies included an institutional support system to assist researchers with those copyright questions (offering training, a reference email address, clear guidelines, etc.).
A strong institutional OS policy should not only set ambitious objectives, but also provide clear guidance and support to help researchers retain their rights and navigate copyright challenges effectively.
Resources for Strengthening Open Access Policies
If your institution wants to boost OA, you can find resources on the Project Retain page to help you tackle copyright and other barriers or contact KR21’s national coordinators.
21 February 2025
