The Ministry of Higher Education and Research publishes the results of the French Open Science Monitor for 2022. The rate of French scientific publications in open access has increased for the fourth consecutive year. Thanks to an innovative methodology, the Monitor has been enriched with new indicators on the opening of doctoral theses, as well as research data, codes and software associated with publications.

In December 2022 67% of the French scientific publications published in 2021 were in open access. This indicator has been steadily increasing since the creation of the French Open Science Monitor with a gain of 5 points compared to 2021 and a 29 point increase since 2018. The increase concerns all research fields, which for the first year all have an opening rate of over 50%. This reflects researchers’ changing publication practices and is a sign that the national open science policy led by the Ministry of Higher Education and Research in coordination with all the stakeholders in the scientific community is now bearing fruit.

The dissemination of the results, methods and products of scientific research is the objective of the second French Plan for Open Science announced in 2021. Open access to scientific publications and – as far as possible – to data, source codes and research methods thus makes it possible to build an ecosystem in which science is more transparent, more strongly documented and reproducible, more efficient and cumulative.

Entirely built on open data and open methodology, the French Open Science Monitor is an evolving tool. After adding indicators on health research in 2021, it is now enriched with data on the openness of PhD theses. As a result, 74% of theses defended in 2020 are open access, a figure that reaches 95% in the fields of mathematics and astronomy. This is another very positive signal regarding the spread of open science practices among young researchers in France.

This 2022 edition of the Monitor also includes the first set of indicators dedicated to research data and to codes and software. These are based on a truly pioneering methodology based on full-text mining and artificial intelligence. It was developed thanks to the national post-Covid Recovery Plan in partnership with the Universitéy of Lorraine and the National Institute for Research in Digital Science and Technology (Inria). Thanks to these new indicators, an initial estimate can be made that 22% of French scientific publications mentioning the production of data are referring to sharing a dataset. This rate rises to 20% for codes and software.

The French Open Science Monitor is a tool for national-level steering but also serves research institutions. Seventy of these now possess their own monitor based on and supported by the national one.

See the French Open Science Monitor website

See General presentation leaflet of the French Open Science Monitor
See the presentation leaflet of the French Open Science Monitor results for 2022

See the Flash Note from the Ministry of Higher Education and Research statistical service  (in French)