← All research data

SeqDesk · original analysis

How open is the published literature?

The share of the MEDLINE-indexed journal literature that Europe PMC flags as open access — free-to-read full text rather than paywalled — by publication year, re-counted weekly from whole-index hit counts.

52%
open access · 2025
9%
open access in 2010
874K
free papers in 2025
1.7M
papers indexed · 2025
0%25%50%75%100%201020122014201620182020202220242025publication year

Each point is the share of that year’s MEDLINE-indexed journal articles that Europe PMC flags as open access — free-to-read full text rather than paywalled. The share has climbed from 9% in 2010 to 52% in 2025, a 43-point gain: open access crossed from a minority to roughly half of all published research. The most recent calendar year is omitted from the line — papers often flip to open access only after a publisher embargo, so its share is still filling in (it sits in the table below, marked *).

How this is tracked
MetricShare of journal articles flagged OPEN_ACCESS:y by Europe PMC, per publication year
DenominatorMEDLINE-indexed journal articles (SRC:MED), by publication year
Update cadenceWeekly automated re-count · latest snapshot 2026-06-25
MeasurementWhole-index hit counts from the EMBL-EBI / Europe PMC — exact, not a sample
Recent-year caveatEmbargoed papers open up later, so the latest year understates the eventual share — read the long arc
Methodscripts/check-open-access.mjs
Open-access share by publication year
YearPapers indexedOpen accessShare
2026 *986K380K38.6%
20251.7M874K51.8%
20241.5M720K46.8%
20231.5M725K48.5%
20221.6M803K50.9%
20211.6M710K45.5%
20201.4M561K39.9%
20191.2M401K32.6%
20181.2M349K29.7%
20171.1M309K27.4%
20161.1M271K24.3%
20151.1M241K22.1%
20141.0M211K20.2%
2013997K175K17.5%
2012944K141K15.0%
2011877K104K11.8%
2010824K76K9.3%

The access counterpart to the open-data card: not whether a paper shares its data, but whether anyone can read it at all — re-counted weekly straight from the EMBL-EBI / Europe PMC. Only aggregate percentages and counts are published. · back to all research data

Use & cite this data

Take this analysis into your own work

These are SeqDesk’s own aggregate figures, refreshed weekly. Download them, drop the live chart into a page, or pull the latest numbers from a small public API — then cite the snapshot you used.

Full dataset · JSONThe complete snapshot behind this page — every series and breakdown, with the source and license inline.Download JSON
Headline series · CSVThe trend shown in the chart as a tidy date,value table — opens straight in Excel, R, or pandas.Download CSV
Chart · SVGThe figure as a crisp vector — scales to any size for slides, posters, or print.
Chart · PNGA high-resolution raster of the figure for quick drops into docs and decks.
License

Aggregate facts compiled by SeqDesk from public archives (EMBL-EBI / Europe PMC) and re-served under each source's terms. Only whole-archive percentages and counts are published — no record-level identifiers. Provided as-is, no warranty. Full method & sources: https://seqdesk.org/data/open-access