Open access publications
The arrival of the internet radically changed opportunities for disseminating scientific knowledge. Digitisation has meant that potentially anyone with internet access can benefit from new scientific insights. Open access aims to make findings from scientific research (particularly that financed through public funding) freely available online to as many people as possible. Dutch universities strongly support open access and have been working to achieve it in various ways over the past few years.
Open access publications universities
The figures below show that 50% of the peer-reviewed articles from 2017 from the 14 Dutch universities are available for open access (on a total of 55.713 articles). This was 42% in 2016. Most of the universities have open access articles in the category “Gold, not DOAJ classified”.
The above figures are based on local measurement methods and can differ per university. This may have an impact on the (comparative) figures. However, every university made use of the joint Definition Framework of the VSNU. All articles published during the measurement year with one or more authors affiliated with a Dutch university were examined by the institutions. The study only looked at articles that 1) are aimed at a scientific audience; 2) were peer reviewed; and 3) were published in an academic journal.
Netherlands and international
Over the past few years, the Netherlands already made great strides towards open access, thanks in part to negotiations that the VSNU and university libraries (allied in the UKB) conducted with the larger publishing houses. This effort is reflected in the graph below, which shows that the Netherlands is one of the leading countries when it comes to open access publications.
Journals per publisher
The graph below shows all publishers deals so far and is a total overview of more than 9.000 journals in which corresponding authors from Dutch universities and UMCs can publish free or with a discount in open access. The list is updated twice a year.
