Production et usage de la littérature en libre accès : une comparaison internationale
Open Access (OA) is a process that aims to make research output freely available on the public internet, allowing the users to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search or link to the full text without any financial, legal or technical barrier. OA has often been suggested as a potential solution to several problems related to the scientific publishing industry: a minority of for profit editors accounting for half of the entire publishing industry, important budget cuts and rising subscription prices in academic libraries, and access to knowledge in lower-income countries. The OA movement originated from the growing demand to make research more accessible worldwide. It has been gaining a lot of momentum, with the implementation of several OA policies by funding institutions and the development of several new platforms (e.g., Open Journal System, African Journals Online, SciELO, and Érudit) that facilitate the publication of OA content at low cost. Studies have shown that between 20% and 50% of research articles are currently available online at no cost, but only a few have compared the use of OA literature at the country level and from a worldwide perspective. Along these lines, this master’s thesis aims to provide a global picture of the current state of OA adoption by countries, using two indicators: publications in OA and references to articles in OA. We find that, on average, low-income countries are publishing and citing OA at the highest rate, while upper-middle income countries and higher income countries publish and cite OA articles at below world-average rates. These results highlight national differences in OA uptake and suggest that more OA initiatives at the institutional, national and international levels are needed to support a wider adoption of open scholarship.
publication Open access Bibliometrics Scientometrics Scientific production Reference Gross national income Repository Publishing