Commission report finds open access policies advance unevenly across EU

A report commissioned by the European Commission has shown that progress has been made, albeit unevenly, on open access policies for research publications and data within the EU.

The document, published on 15/09/2026, stated that the implementation of open access, based on the principle that publicly funded research should be publicly accessible, "has proven far less straightforward than imagined by some of the open access pioneers in the early 2000s... Progress has been real but uneven, and, especially from the perspective of early open access advocates, slower than expected."

The document shows regulatory fragmentation that hinders the free flow of scientific knowledge. The author, Daniel Spichtinger, a researcher specialising in EU research policy and open science, identifies in…