On March 18, 2026, the National Science Library of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and China Book Import and Export (Group) Co., Ltd., the developers of the "2025 Global Open Access Journals and APC Monitoring Report," invited experts from relevant institutions such as academies of sciences, universities, research funders, journals, publishing houses, and the China Association for Science and Technology to review the report. The meeting was chaired by Liu Xiwen, a researcher and director of the National Science Library of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). The Open Science Research Center of National Science Library of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) introduced the structure, key statistical data, and monitoring results of the 2025 annual report.
In 2025, the global transition to open access (OA) publishing continued to accelerate, with the number of OA journals indexed by the Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE) accounting for over 91% of all indexed journals. International traditional publishers, including academic association publishing houses, intensified the transition of their journals to OA. In 2025, the global publication volume of OA papers exceeded 1.18 million, with Spring Nature Group leading the world in OA paper publication volume, showing an annual increase of 25%. Scientific Reports remained the journal with the highest global publication volume of OA papers. In 2025, the global APC revenue exceeded $3.77 billion. Springer Nature was the publishing institution with the highest global APC revenue, showing an increase of 28%, with some OA journals achieving APC revenue exceeding $100 million per journal. In 2025, the market share of Chinese OA journals was still less than 3%, with materials science and multidisciplinary OA journals having the highest number of publications, totaling 26,000 articles and generating an annual APC revenue of approximately $50 million.
In 2025, Chinese authors published over 380,000 open access (OA) papers, with an annual growth rate of 23%. The report points out in the monitoring results section that it is necessary to make academic exchanges more aligned with public welfare operations and led by the scientific research community. It suggests: encouraging and supporting the free flow of academic ideas, perspectives, and research results within a public welfare system, and promoting the open publication of high-quality research outcomes; scientific research institutions should assume the functions of academic registration, certification, and archiving, establishing public exchange platforms and mechanisms; establishing open science sharing platforms to embed the concept of open sharing throughout the entire process of scientific research. The "2025 Global OA Journals and APC Monitoring Report" is the seventh annual report in this series. Experts affirm the importance and necessity of this series of reports, believing that it provides crucial data and references for understanding the global marketization of OA publishing trends, journal OA transformation, APC policies, as well as for conducting research on the transformation of OA publishing in Chinese journals, strengthening the dissemination management of research results and research funding management, and exploring open access pathways. Experts suggest that further in-depth exploration should be given to the new publishing trends revealed in the 2025 report, as well as statistical analysis of OA publications and APCs for specific institutions. At the same time, they call for a return to the essence of academic exchange in academic paper publishing from the perspective of open science, with academic groups and the scientific community being the primary drivers.