Daniel BuenoA study commissioned by the European Commission shows that in countries like the United States, Switzerland, The Netherlands and Brazil, the proportion of articles published in scientific journals that are freely available and free within two years after release already exceeds 50%. The same milestone has been reached on a global scale by biomedical, biology, mathematics and statistics publications. This indicates that open access of scientific publications has reached a tipping point, according to Éric Archambault, cited in the journal Science, and author of the study. The survey highlights the situation of Brazil, which has provided open access to 63% of publications through the SciELO Library, a special FAPESP program established in 1997 and which today contains more than 240 publications in various fields of knowledge, resulting in an average of 36 million downloads of articles each month (see Pesquisa FAPESP Issue No. 192).
