The Open Access Landscape in Africa: A Two-Decade Analysis of Access, Collaboration and Funding, 2002–2021

Background. Open access (OA) can widen access to research, but its uptake in Africa has rarely been measured across the whole continent and over a long period. Methods. We identified 854,785 articles with at least one African institutional address, indexed in the Web of Science Core Collection and published between 2002 and 2021. We matched each article by DOI to Unpaywall (August 2022) and described OA by year, OA type, region, country, research area, collaboration type and funding. Results. Overall, 44.3% of articles were openly available. The yearly share rose from 16.7% in 2002 to 56.0% in 2020 and 55.0% in 2021, and OA articles have outnumbered closed ones since 2018. Gold OA made up 67.6% of OA articles in 2021. Shares ranged from 61.5% in Eastern Africa to 33.9% in Northern Africa, and from 28.5% (Tunisia) to 78.4% (Gambia) across 54 countries (mean 57.7%, SD 11.2). More than 70% of articles in public health, infectious diseases and tropical medicine were OA, against 25–32% in materials science, engineering, chemistry, computer science and physics. Over the whole period, 50.4% of articles with a co-author outside Africa were OA, against 36.5% of articles from a single African country. Funded articles were more often OA than unfunded ones (56.9% vs 35.5%). Mean citations were higher for OA articles, but this comparison is not adjusted for field or journal. Conclusions. OA is now the majority mode for internationally indexed African research, but the gains are uneven and lean on Gold OA, external funding and international partners. Because Web of Science covers journals published in Africa poorly, these results describe the internationally visible part of African research.