Following the initiatives of other countries such as Denmark, Netherlands and the United Kingdom, this observatory shows the results of the participating institutions obtained from it methodology. It also presents the aggregated information.

The results complement the data shown by the open access publication indicator of the Research Portal of Catalonia (PRC). This indicator presents the total number of publications and theses that are in the PRC in open and closed access and the average open access publications. More information about the PRC indicator.

The Observatory is also complemented by the Open Access Thermometers of the Universitat de Barcelona Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya I la Universitat Pompeu Fabra.

Soon, the Observatory will present the costs of researchers and institutions when publishing openly.

The Observatory shows for each year from 2011, the scientific articles of each university published in open and closed access. The sources of information used are Web of Science and Scopus.

After eliminating the duplicates, from the DOI the number of articles is recovered

• They have been published in purely open access magazines
• They have been published in hybrid magazines, in other words, subscription magazines that offer authors publish in open access immediately by paying one Article Processing Charge
• They have free access but the articles have no license: bronze
• They are only open in institutional or thematic repositories
• they are not in open access

When an article is published openly in a magazine and in a repository it has been counted one time, prioritizing the publication in the magazine and not the deposit in the repository.

When an article is in a repository but is not in open access because it has an embargue it has not been accounted for as an open access article.

The information is updated 2 times a year, during the months of April and October.