Knowledge Unlatched’s report sees Germany following the United States in usage of open-access content in its ‘Open Access Heroes’ survey.

By Porter Anderson, Editor-in-Chief | @Porter_Anderson

Politics and International Studies in the Lead

In its 10th year, Berlin’s Knowledge Unlatched today (April 6) has announced its new list of “Open Access Heroes” for 2023—by which the company refers to countries, institutions, publishers, disciplines, and scholarly titles that are “seeing the most usage worldwide.”

The total user interactions for Knowledge Unlatched titles, including downloads and views, now stands at 21.3 million—a significant increase of 30 percent since last year’s KU Heroes announcement.

About 4,000 books have been published open-access to date through Knowledge Unlatched’s initiatives, and this number is expected to grow to 4,350 titles by the end of 2023, the company says.

In addition, nearly 6,500 institutions worldwide used Knowledge Unlatched books last year. Politics and international studies were the most popular subject, with more than 700,000 user interactions.

Sven Fund, senior director with Wiley, in making today’s statement, says, “Open-access books are better books.

“The usage of the titles we unlatch continues to grow, and we are particularly pleased to see the notable jump in total user interactions.

“These numbers reaffirm the importance of unlatching open-access monographs and making them widely available for reading and research.”

Statistics on the ‘Heroes’

The country that continues to see the highest usage of open-access books remains the United States, with nearly 1.4 million interactions, followed by:

• Germany (394,000+)
• The United Kingdom (390,000+)
• India (255,000)
• Canada (160,000)

The top five institutions with the most user interactions in 2022 are all in the United Kingdom. The are:

• The University of Edinburgh
• The University of Cambridge
• The University of Exeter
• University College London
• The University of Bristol

As in previous years, open-access usage assessment results are based on the data collected from several hosting platforms, including the Open Research Library, OAPEN, JSTOR, and Project MUSE.

• The book with the most interactions in 2022 was (again) MIT Press’ Frankenstein: A New Edition for Scientists and Engineers by Mary Shelley, edited by David H. Guston, Ed Finn, and Jason Scott Robert (MIT Press), with nearly 73,000 interactions last year
• UCL Press’ Social Theory After the Internet: Media, Technology, and Globalization by Ralph Schroeder (UCL Press) with nearly 45,000 interactions
• The University of Georgia Press’ Medical Bondage: Race, Gender, and the Origins of American Gynecology with more than 36,000 interactions)

An infographic–the annual visual piece that comes with the “Heroes” announcement–presents the usage data in one place and can be downloaded from the Open Research Community site, and we’ll place it below, as well for you.

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More from Publishing Perspectives on academic and scholarly publishing is here, more from us on Knowledge Unlatched is here, and more from us on open access is here.