Since 2011 KTH has a policy on Scientific publishing saying that KTH researchers should make their research as open as possible and that all theses and reports from KTH must be published openly in the KTH institutional repository DiVA. Since then the movement towards an Open Research society has been even more implemented and it is therefore interesting to follow up the share of Open Access publications at KTH. The first OA report was published in 2016 and covered the years 2011-2014. Since then KTH library has produced OA reports on the KTH publishing every year. This version is made in another form and published as a webpage. Since 2025, Open Access data are fetched from OpenAlex.
This report is aimed towards all interested in publishing practices at KTH. For those interested in a more in-depth analysis or discussion around Open Access, or have questions or suggestions regarding this report, we are always happy to discuss the subject or give a presentation. Please contact the KTH Library at biblioteket@kth.se.
Some Open Access information down to department level is also available in the KTH Annual Bibliometric Monitoring (ABM) and in KTH Research Information (needs KTH login).
This report will be updated several times during the year, with the most current version always available at https://bibliometrics.lib.kth.se/OA-rapport.html. There will also be a frozen version each year (linked below).
The data for this version of the KTH Open Access report was retrieved 2025-02-19.
OA refers to the unrestricted online access (i.e. free to read and reuse) to journal articles and other related publications, but Open Access (OA) can be achieved in different ways. In this report we use OA definitions reminiscent of those provided by the online service OpenAlex.
Open access to research publications has more and more become the default worldwide in the aim to spread research results and impact of research. OA is allowing authors, readers, funders and other stakeholders to benefit from the latest research and also take part in and contribute to research. The purpose is generally to increase equity within research and access to knowledge.
From the start of Open Access movement there were two major ways to publish open. The first route is known as ‘green OA’ or selfarchiving, and includes papers that are published in a traditional subscription based way, but which are also deposited in a public repository, either an institutional repository or a subject based archive (e.g. DiVA, a publication database/repository used by several Swedish institutions of higher-learning, including KTH). The other route is generally called ‘gold OA’ and refers to articles published in an all-OA journal (i.e. a journal with no subscription barriers and free for all to read). A hybrid form of Gold OA is when only a few articles are OA in an otherwise closed subscription based journal. Those two forms of OA includes the payment of a fee, an APC (Article Processing Charge) and may cost from 0 to 100 000 SEK depending on which journal. More recently a form called Diamond OA has evolved. This form means it is free to read and also free to publish. Diamond OA is mainly funded by an institution, by membership and/or by an external funder.
Assessment of OA publishing at KTH rely on data sourced via OpenAlex, a database of metadata for scientific publications created by Our Research who also produce Unpaywall which was the previous main data source for Open Access information at KTH. OA status is determined by identifying online locations and then assigning an OA subtype based on a ‘better-than-rule’. For example, a publication is considered gold OA if both gold and green are available. A publication is considered ‘closed’ if no openly available online location can be detected. OpenAlex also report a category referred to as ‘bronze OA’, publications free to read online with ambiguous license policies. These publications can be withdrawn by the publisher at any time. In this report, bronze is treated as non-OA. However, publications classed as ‘bronze’ or ‘closed’ where an openly available archive copy can be found are locally reclassified as ‘green’.
To conclude, diamond, gold, hybrid, and green are treated as ‘Total OA’, while bronze and closed are treated as ‘Not OA’.
Previous online reports are listed below. Earlier reports can be found in DiVA.
The share of OA publications at KTH has steadily increased since 2011, at least until 2023. The largest increase is for journal articles and doctoral/licentiate theses. The share of OA for Conference papers is also increasing but at a much slower rate, while the share of OA for book chapters is small and only slightly increasing. The number of books published from KTH is small, causing the curve to appear jumpy.
The differences between publication types is most probably due to the fact that the KTH Library covers the cost for journal articles, either by publishing agreements, or by APC:s (Article Processing Charges). Costs for other publications types than articles are generally not covered by the library and publishing agreements for those are virtually nonexistent. On the other hand, many conferences are more generous to allow parallel publishing. The KTH Library does not cover the cost for BPC:S (Book Processing Charges) and the publishers are generally not generous towards parallel publishing of books or chapters. The ABE school has the largest share of OA for book chapters as well as the largest share of book chapters of all the KTH schools.
Even though the majority of journals are hybrid, most of the articles are OA, obviously due to the agreement the library has with the publishers.
Please note that data for 2024 is not yet complete. Publication numbers will increase and the presented shares of OA are uncertain. The report will be updated during the year.
A study of the different types of OA shows a dramatic increase of hybrid OA, while the share of Gold OA shows a slighter but steady increase. Clearly the agreements the library have with publishers has an impact on the road towards OA, and help increase the hybrid form. The first read and publish agreement was made in 2017 with Springer. Since then the number of such agreements have steadily increased and today there are read and publish agreements with most publishers.
The share of green OA is consequently decreasing, probably because libraries started to cover the cost for gold and hybrid OA. Those ways are easier for the author, who doesn’t need to do anything more than accept. To publish green OA, the author needs to know about the publishers conditions on parallel publishing and upload the article in a repository like DiVA. When studying the different schools share of OA, it is even more clear that green OA is decreasing at the same rate that hybrid OA is increasing. Of all KTH schools, the EECS school has the largest share of green OA. Traditionally, the SCI school has had the largest share of Green OA but this form of OA has dramatically decreased.
The diamond form of OA has been steady since 2014 when it first appeared. We expect this form to increase in future since stake holders are beginning to favor this form of OA as the most equitable and also economically sustainable. Of all KTH schools the SCI school has the largest share of Diamond OA, likely due to the large share of articles in physics, which has a long tradition of open publishing.
The KTH policy on scientific publishing mandates that doctoral theses, licentiate theses and student theses are published in fulltext in DiVA. Doctoral theses and licentiate theses must be registered in DiVA at the latest three weeks before defence date. These are registered by the authors themselves. Student theses must be registered at the latest the second semester after examination and administrators at the respective schools handles these. Doctoral theses as well as licentiate theses are now reaching more or less 100% in fulltext. Note that fulltext here means only the summary part, if a comprehensive summary thesis. Only monographs are actually in fulltext. However, as more and more journal articles are actually OA, so more and more doctoral theses are completely OA, including the added papers. The share of fulltext of student theses vary significantly between schools and therefore we show the results of every school separately.
Since 2017 the library has started to sign agreements on Read and Publish, that means that access to articles and the fee for publishing OA (the APC) is included in one deal. In addition to this the KTH library also covers the APC for single publications, in both cases on the condition that the corresponding author is afilliated to KTH. If there is more than one corresponding author, all of them must be affiliated to KTH for the cost to be covered.
In 2020 KTH centralized the budgeting for OA costs to the library, hence the dramatic drop for APC KTH schools and increase of APC KTH Library. The total cost for paid OA has decreased since 2020.
The School of Architecture and the Built Environment (ABE) is comprised of six departments and the research is focused on society - how cities, buildings and infrastructure will be designed and built, how institutions and regulatory systems should be developed to produce a good living environment, and how to provide good development conditions for business.
Compared to the other KTH schools, the research results are in a larger degree presented in book chapters and books as well as in journal articles. For book chapters the option for OA is not as common as for other publications types, like article in journals or conference papers.
At the school of The School of Engineering Sciences in Chemistry (CBH), Biotechnology and Health, research within health, environment, energy and materials are conducted.
The CBH school has had an active approach for making article OA. Before the funding for OA was centralized to KTH library, the management at CBH school added further to the sum that was granted from KTH, to make as much OA as possible.
The School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS), conduct research and education in electrical engineering, computer science, intelligent systems and human centered technology, and in these areas, research is generally presented at conferences and in conference proceedings. This is shown clearly in the list below of top 20 publication sources at this school.
Research at the School of Industrial Engineering and Management (ITM) are performed in areas of industrial design and innovation, product and production development, materials development, energy technology, learning in engineering sciences as well as industrial economics, organisation and management.
Research at the School of Engineering Sciences (SCI) include physics, mathematics and engineering mechanics.