Open Access: ETH Zurich leads the way globally
Thanks to its unique conditions, ETH Zurich is an international leader in terms of its share of open access publications, as analyses by the ETH Library show. This leads to greater visibility and strengthens research.
It should really go without saying: scientific literature should be available to everyone without restriction. The technical term for this free access is “open access” (see box). ETH Zurich is also committed to these principles – with success: in 2023, it published over 85% of all its journal articles in open access, which is proportionally more than any of the twenty top universities in the Times Higher Education Rankings (2025), including Oxford, MIT, Harvard and Princeton. In 2014, the figure at ETH Zurich was only around half that.
This was the result of recent bibliometric analyses by the ETH Library, which evaluated the number of publications on the basis of the Dimensions database (Digital Science). ETH Zurich owes its global pioneering role to the groundbreaking framework conditions at our university, which were co-developed by the ETH Library.
Greater impact of research
Open access not only improves access to research findings. Rather, the analyses by the ETH Library indicate that articles published in open access also have a greater impact. On average, these articles from ETH Zurich were cited more often than all closed-access publications in Dimensions. They also made it into the top 10% of the most cited publications worldwide in the same subject area and the same year more often. Those who published their research results in open access were therefore more widely noticed and gave their results a greater scientific impact.
Greater transparency and cooperation
With its open access strategy, ETH Zurich is increasing the transparency of research results and making them easier to find and more visible. It is helping to accelerate the scientific system, promote international and interdisciplinary cooperation, and ensure the transfer of knowledge to society, politics and industry.
Open access at ETH Zurich
Open access aims to make research results available free of charge and with as few barriers as possible. This is in line with the national open access strategy of swissuniversities. ETH Zurich therefore requires its researchers, in its Open Access Policy and APC Guidelines, to make all research results and theses available via the Research Collection repository operated by the ETH Library. (Incidentally, this repository was recently expanded.) In addition, scientists are encouraged to publish their results in suitable open access journals. ETH Zurich provides financial resources for the Article Processing Charges (APC). This unique arrangement, in which the ETH Library is responsible for central processing and financing, enables cost-effective and efficient support for ETH research.
Are you planning to publish an article? The ETH Library's e-publishing team will be happy to assist you () – from the open access requirements of research funding agencies to the financing of the publication.
Further information
How to proceed with the financing of open access publications with SNF funding.
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