Are Pay-Walled Doors of Access Open During the Pandemic? Analysing the Open-Access Landscape of COVID-19 Research

Abstract

Open access (OA) to research results is indispensable for knowing more about COVID-19 and ways to contain it. The study investigates the OA status of the research output on COVID-19 using the Web of Science. The results show that about 85 per cent of the publications are available as OA, which shows a decline over time. Almost an equal proportion of articles are funded and non-funded, with the Department of Health and Human Services and the National Institutes of Health, both in the United States, as the leading sponsors. Although the United States and China were the top contributors, Sweden and the Netherlands share the highest percentage of OA articles. Among publishers, Elsevier, Springer Nature, the Multidisciplinary Publishing Institute, and Wiley were the leading OA publishers, and universities mainly dominated OA research on COVID-19. This study will be helpful for researchers and policymakers to identify the leading contributors to OA research during public health emergencies of international concern.