Gold open access (OA) reached its highest share in 2025, accounting for 44% of all global journal articles, reviews, and conference papers, according to the latest release of the STM Open Access Dashboard. Nearly two million research articles were published through gold OA that year, making it the leading route for immediate, freely available access to research.
The Dashboard tracks OA uptake from 2015 to 2025 and shows that gold OA has quadrupled over the past decade. Publishers now provide gold OA options for 84% of the world’s research articles, reflecting sustained investment in expanded pathways, new business models such as transformative agreements, and collaborations supporting open science. Transformative agreements alone enabled more than 338,000 publications to be openly available in 2025, helping scale OA across disciplines and regions.
Gold OA is now offered for approximately 84% of both STM and social sciences and humanities publications, closing a longstanding disciplinary gap. In 2025, 45% of social sciences and humanities articles were published via gold OA, slightly surpassing the 44% share in STM disciplines.
Publication trends suggest OA has shifted from rapid expansion to a more mature phase of growth. While gold OA continues to grow faster than subscription‑only publishing, rising research output from countries such as China and India means that subscription publishing also continues to expand, reshaping the overall market.
Caroline Sutton, CEO of STM, noted that a decade of investment by publishers, institutions, and funders has expanded opportunities to publish openly, driven uptake across disciplines, and made immediate access to the version of record a mainstream reality. She emphasized that as OA enters a more mature phase, sustaining progress will require continued investment and collaboration to support access while maintaining quality assurance, stewardship, and integrity in research.
The full dataset is available through the STM Open Access Dashboard.
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