The CSIC Doubles Its Open-Access Scientific Publications Thanks to PROA and Reaches Record Numbers in 2025
The CSIC’s Programa de Sport a la Publicació en Accés Obert (PROA) -Open Access Publication Support Program- has funded the publication of 14,524 scientific articles between 2020 and 2025, establishing itself as one of the main institutional tools for promoting open-access science. During this period, the number of funded works doubled (+102%), rising from 1,573 articles in 2020 to 3,174 in 2025—the highest figure ever recorded by the program.
These data are included in the PROA evaluation report for the 2020–2025 period, which highlights the program’s growing importance in institutional scientific output. Overall, PROA funded 45.6% of all CSIC scientific output with a corresponding author, a percentage that reached 65.5% in 2025, reflecting the gradual implementation of open access at the institution.
Currently, PROA encompasses more than 30 publishing agreements, including both transformative agreements with hybrid publishers and prepaid accounts for fully open-access (Full Open Access) journals. Thanks to these agreements, CSIC researchers can publish in open access with full or partial coverage of article processing charges (APCs) in nearly 13,000 scientific journals.
The transformative agreements signed with major scientific publishers—Elsevier, Wiley, Springer Nature, and ACS—funded the majority of the publications, accounting for approximately 59% of the total. In addition to providing open access to research results, the program has led to significant cost savings. The shift from traditional subscription contracts to read-and-publish agreements has resulted in estimated savings of 1.04 million euros, equivalent to 14.55% of the costs.
This model has made it possible to fund open-access publishing without significantly increasing the overall cost of access to scientific journals. Thanks to the agreements managed by PROA, CSIC research staff avoided incurring publication costs (APCs) of nearly 27 million euros—expenses that would otherwise have been borne by research projects or could have restricted the dissemination of scientific results under restricted-access models.
The report also highlights the impact of open access on the international visibility of CSIC’s research. Nearly 3,000 PROA-funded articles were published in journals with the highest scientific impact, reinforcing the institution’s international standing.
Furthermore, the results show that articles published in open access receive more citations than those published under subscription models. Within the framework of the four main transformative agreements—ACS, Elsevier, Springer Nature, and Wiley—open-access articles receive up to 28% more citations on average.
Considering the set of publications analyzed, open-access articles receive up to twice as many citations as those with restricted access, highlighting their greater reach and scientific impact.
The evaluation concludes that PROA has established itself as a successful strategic initiative for the CSIC, substantially expanding open-access publishing, improving the cost-effectiveness of the investment made, and increasing the scientific impact of its research.
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