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 Portal de Recerca de Catalunya (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, and 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.

Until 2021, the measurement of open access has been calculated from the data extracted from Web of Science and Scopus and using Unpaywall. The dataset with the 2011-2021 data is published in CORA-RDR.

As of 2023, the data extracted from Openalex from the ROR of each university is used.

After eliminating the duplicates and using the DOI, the Observatory retrieves the number of articles 

• that have been published in pure open access journals whether or not an APC has been paid for (diamond journals)
• that have been published in hybrid journals, this is, subscription journals that offer authors to publish in immediate open access by paying one Article Processing Charge​​​​
• that have free access but in which articles have no license: bronze
• that are only published open in institutional or thematic repositories
• they are not in open access 

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

When an article is published openly in a journal and in a repository it has been counted one time, prioritizing the publication in the journal and not the deposit in the repository (graphics 1 and 2).

However, in graphic 3, a column is presented for each university with all articles published. The graphic shows the availability of copies in the repositories for gold, hybrid and bronze options.

The information is updated 2 times per year, in April and in October.