Measuring the prevalence of open access in Canada: A national comparison

Abstract

For two decades, open access (OA) has gained momentum worldwide. However, adoption of OA in Canada is lagging compared with other countries. Using data from Dimensions and Érudit, this paper provides an overview of OA dissemination in Canada, focusing on the effect of institutions, language, and funding. Papers in French, and from Quebec universities, are more likely to be OA, while papers from engineering-oriented institutions are less likely to be OA. Regarding funders, those in health sciences have higher OA compliance. The paper concludes discussing disciplinary differences in OA dissemination, low compliance to OA mandates in Canada, and the role of Érudit.

Development of a diagnostic framework and its application to open access journal publishing in Korea

“…Moreover, OA publishing provides the general public with free access to the most recent research outputs whilst achieving global knowledge equity among researchers, particularly for those who cannot access scholarly resources behind a paywall. At the individual level, authors benefit from OA publishing by increasing their research visibility, readership and citations (Evans & Reimer, 2009; Paquet et al, 2022; Pearce, 2022). Over the past 20 years, OA publishing has steadily increased.…”

“…level, authors benefit from OA publishing by increasing their research visibility, readership and citations (Evans & Reimer, 2009;Paquet et al, 2022;Pearce, 2022). Over the past 20 years,…”

The state of green open access in Canadian universities

“…Despite being an early signatory and the home of prominent OA champions, Canada is not at the forefront of OA (Moskovkin et al 2021;Simard et al 2022); Canada appears in the top 10 countries with the most OA repositories but lacks OA participation from researchers compared with other highincome countries (Moskovkin et al 2021). Differences in the uptake of OA by researchers have also been highlighted across provinces (Larivière and Macaluso 2011;Paquet, van Bellen, and Larivière 2022). Despite having well-established, multidisciplinary, and Open Archives Initiative OAI-compliant IRs, Canadian universities belonging to the U15, an association of fifteen Canadian research-intensive universities, exhibit low deposit levels (Paquet, van Bellen, and Larivière 2022) and more research is needed to analyze the effectiveness of initiatives and policies prescribing their use.…”

“…Differences in the uptake of OA by researchers have also been highlighted across provinces (Larivière and Macaluso 2011;Paquet, van Bellen, and Larivière 2022). Despite having well-established, multidisciplinary, and Open Archives Initiative OAI-compliant IRs, Canadian universities belonging to the U15, an association of fifteen Canadian research-intensive universities, exhibit low deposit levels (Paquet, van Bellen, and Larivière 2022) and more research is needed to analyze the effectiveness of initiatives and policies prescribing their use.…”

“…Despite increased recognition of the importance of OA (Creaser et al 2010) and, more broadly, Open science (Boulton et al 2020; "UNESCO Recommendation on Open Science" 2021), little attention has been given to the use of the IR by researchers within a Canadian university specifically for self-archiving peer-reviewed journal publications, and how IR use may be affected by university policies, journal self-archiving policies, or disciplinary cultures. While past research has looked at self-archiving rates in Canada (Paquet, van Bellen, and Larivière 2022) and globally (Simard et al 2022), this work is, to our knowledge, the first to focus on the use of IRs specifically and consider institutional and journal OA policies. Another unique feature of our work is its reliance solely on open data sources.…”