The Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) has introduced new “open climate campaign” tagging to sustain the legacy of the Open Climate Campaign and improve discoverability of climate research. The tagging creates a subject collection of more than 7,000 relevant articles as of February 2026.
The Open Climate Campaign, a partnership between Creative Commons, SPARC, and EIFL funded by the Arcadia Fund, ran from 2022 to 2024. Initial data assessed by the campaign indicated that only half of climate change research papers examined were openly available, limiting access for readers without institutional subscriptions. The initiative advocated for open sharing of climate science research, expanded open access policies, and pursued approaches to make climate research more accessible.
Although the campaign concluded in 2024, related initiatives have continued. Creative Commons has maintained efforts through open science work to facilitate the licensing and sharing of climate research, including datasets and data models. Over the past two years, the organization has worked with major data providers to openly license climate change data and provide metadata recommendations to support interoperability and sharing.
DOAJ has begun automatically tagging articles identified through the Open Climate Campaign. Using the keyword “open climate campaign” in article searches retrieves more than 7,000 articles. The tagging enables DOAJ to highlight these articles as a subject collection on the platform, providing an additional method beyond standard search and browse features to increase visibility.
The development is positioned as a way to leverage existing tools and infrastructure to improve access to climate change research regardless of institutional affiliation. Stakeholders in the open access community, including organizations supporting open science and library advocacy, have emphasized the importance of comprehensive open access to scholarly literature and research documentation to address global challenges such as climate change.
Publishers indexed in DOAJ can enhance discoverability by adding the tag “open climate campaign” in the keywords field when supplying new article metadata via XML, JSON, or metadata input forms. Articles already indexed may be retrospectively updated by resupplying metadata with the additional keyword.
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