Last year, the United Nation’s Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organizagtion (UNESCO) announced the creation of the Global Open Access Portal, a project that aims to map the landscape of open access to scholarly and scientific information around the world. Funded by Colombia, Denmark, Norway, and the U.S., the portal is “designed to provide the necessary information for policy-makers to learn about the global Open Access environment and to view their country’s status, and understand where and why Open Access has been most successful.”

For each nation, the portal has the following info:

  • Country-wise distilled knowledge on the status of Open Access
  • Key organizations engaged in OA in Member States
  • Thematic focus areas of OA
  • Important publications on OA coming from different regions of the world
  • Critical assessment of major barriers to OA in each country
  • Potential of OA in UNESCO Member States
  • Funding and deposit mandates
  • Links to OA initiatives in the world