Austrian Science Fund (FWF) Open Access Compliance Monitoring 2020

I. Executive summary

The Austrian Science Fund (FWF), which is Austria's main funding organisation for basic research, encourages and helps all project leaders and project staff members to make their peer-reviewed research results freely available on the Internet. Any exceptions must be clearly indicated and justified. For projects that started after 1 January 2015, open access has been compulsory for all peer-reviewed publications. All principal investigators in FWF-funded projects are obliged to submit a final report within four months of completing their projects.

In 2020, a total of 483 final reports were submitted to the FWF, 32 of which could not report any publications so far. The publications and other data mentioned in those reports are archived and analysed by the FWF. This report examines the state of compliance with open access requirements for peer-reviewed publications on the basis of final project reports submitted in the year 2020.

2020 shows a significant decline in the number of publications compared to 2019. This decline can be explained by the fact that 15% fewer final project reports were received as a result of weaker funding years in the mid-2010s as well as an increased shift of final report submissions from 2020 to later points in time (‘corona effect’). Especially in the programmes with the highest number of publications (Doctoral Programmes, Special Research Programmes) as well as in programmes with many projects (Stand-Alone Projects, International Projects), there were fewer final project reports submitted, which has a massive impact on the total number of publications. It must be taken into account that the method (recording the number of publications via final project reports) is a look into the past, as the final project reports show publications that were produced in previous years during the project term. The publication activity in relation to the year of publication itself is relatively constant according to databases such as Dimensions. Due to the automation of the monitoring processes and the introduction of Plan S of cOAlition S, the category of ‘Other open access’ (self-archiving in a non-maintained repository, homepage, or archiving of preprints), which was previously determined manually, is no longer taken into account, and thus the open access share of peer-reviewed publications has decreased compared to previous years.

Main findings:

-A total of 6,196 publications were listed in the final project reports submitted in 2020.

-Of those publications, 4,809 were conclusively identified as peer-reviewed.

-Regarding compliance with the FWF's Open Access Policy, the analysis shows that 84% of the peer-reviewed publications listed in the final project reports submitted in 2020 were openly accessible (2015: 83%, 2016: 92%, 2017: 90%, 2018: 92%, 2019: 89%).

-The most frequently chosen option was hybrid open access (40%). The share of old open access was 21%, the share of green open access 23%, and no open access 16%.

-The majority of peer-reviewed publications submitted were journal articles (89%), 88% of which were openly accessible.

-The lowest rate of compliance with the FWF's Open Access Policy could be found in editions, contributions to edited volumes, and monographs (38%).

-The absolute number of publications listed in final reports in 2020 included 362 publications that were mentioned several times in different projects; however, those repetitions did not ultimately affect the relative share of open access publications (83%).

II. Bias

Most of the publications were submitted to the FWF via a research documentation system (provided by ©Researchfish), in which FWF-funded researchers are able to enter and update their research data on an ongoing basis. The last check of the open access status was performed in March 2020. In some cases, the embargo period may have already expired, and publications labelled ‘no open access’ in the FWF’s database may now be accessible through green open access.

Whenever the status ‘peer-reviewed’ could not be clearly identified according to the FWF’s guidelines, the publications were classified as non-peer reviewed.

Openly available non-peer reviewed publications were entered as 'openly available’.