Benchmarking open access publication rates for the pharmaceutical industry and research-intensive academic institutions

Objective In biomedical and health sciences, many articles are published open access (OA). Rates of OA publications continue to grow, including for research carried out by pharmaceutical companies. To help drive more openness in the pharmaceutical industry, we aimed to compare the OA publication rates of pharmaceutical companies with those of academic institutions. Methods We assessed OA publication rates from the 40 largest pharmaceutical companies by earnings and 40 comparator academic institutions that publish the largest number of medical research articles in their geographical region. Using the Lens, we built a live public dashboard that presents the OA publication rates for articles with authors affiliated to the pharmaceutical companies and comparator academic institutions of interest, detailed by OA model and licence, and by medical therapy area. We performed further analysis on data downloaded from the dashboard. Results In our primary analysis of articles 12-24 months since publication date, 76.6% of pharmaceutical company (pharma) and 69.5% of academic institution (academia) publications were OA. The most common OA models were gold (pharma, 37%; academia, 41%) and hybrid (pharma, 22%; academia, 11%). Oncology had lower rates of OA publications than other therapy areas. Growth in the OA publication rate was generally more rapid for pharmaceutical companies than for academic institutions, regardless of field. Conclusions The OA publication rate was higher for pharmaceutical companies than for academic institutions and continues to increase. With the pharmaceutical industry focused on encouraging authors to publish OA and increasingly aware of the different types of OA licences, we expect and welcome further changes. Our new report provides data on pharmaceutical company and academic institution publications that are updated every 2 weeks. We encourage others to use this open resource and report their results.