KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Japan’s government gets started on its nationwide plan to make publicly funded research free to read by investing ¥10 billion (£50 million).
• This investment will be used to standardise institutional data/publication repositories, making all research available on the same national server.

In June, the Japanese government took another step towards its goal of making publicly funded research papers free to access from April 2025. As reported by Dalmeet Singh Chawla for Nature News, this makes Japan one of the first countries in the world to launch a plan for open access (OA) on a national scale.

Investment in infrastructure

To make the transition to OA, the Japanese government will invest ¥10 billion (around £50 million) to standardise university data and publication repositories. While each institution will host research by their own academics, these repositories will all be hosted on the same national server. The result: Japan will have “a unified record of all research produced by its academics” that, importantly, does not overlook articles published in Japanese.

A green OA strategy

Japan’s transition to open science is based on green OA, a strategy the government considers more feasible for universities than a gold OA model. As reported by Singh Chawla, experts in open science and OA have praised the Japanese government’s plans.  Johan Rooryck, Executive Director of cOAlition S, supported the use of green OA “especially for all the content that is still behind the paywall”. Meanwhile, Kathleen Shearer, Executive Director of the Confederation of Open Access Repositories, highlighted the equitable nature of the plans.

Although slow to embrace open science, Shearer notes that Japan is now leading the way in OA publishing.

Japan is now leading the way in OA publishing.

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