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The Global South’s Role in Shaping the Open Science Paradigm

In the sixth lecture of the Open Divide Series, Joachim Schöpfel, Hélène Prost, and Behrooz Rasuli will present “The Global South’s Role in Shaping the Open Science Paradigm — an analysis of the Global South’s contribution to the open science movement and the impact of open repositories and publishing platforms”. Their talk on October 22, 2025, at 5:00 PM CEST reveals how unequal structures, fragmented infrastructures, and regional dynamics continue to shape access to knowledge, while also highlighting emerging opportunities for a more inclusive and equitable global knowledge ecosystem.

👉Abstract
This study evaluates the state of Open Access (OA) scholarly publishing in Global South countries as of March 2025. It analyzes data from major sources including Scopus, BASE, DOAJ, OpenDOAR, ROARMAP, and re3data, comparing current trends with 2017 benchmarks.

(1) Key findings:

Underrepresentation & Concentration: Global South countries contribute 27% of Scopus-indexed publications, but only 8–11% of open access documents in BASE. The OA ecosystem is highly concentrated in a few countries—mainly Brazil, Indonesia, India, Turkey, China, and Iran.

Open Access Journals (Gold Road): 41% of OA journals are from the Global South. However, 9 countries account for 82% of this output, with Indonesia and Brazil leading. Diamond OA models (free of APCs) dominate in Brazil and Turkey.

Repositories (Green Road): Global South hosts 27% of OA repositories. Five countries account for over 50% of them. Institutional OA policies are mostly from Turkish institutions.

Research Data Repositories: Only 9% of such repositories are based in Global South countries, with China and India responsible for nearly half.

(2) Growth since 2017:

OA Journals: +139% (3,685 → 8,825)

Repositories: +105% (795 → 1,628)

Data Repositories: +168% (113 → 303)

Growth is significant but unequally distributed. The study identifies regional and income disparities: Latin America/Caribbean and East Asia/Pacific are leading regions. Upper middle-income countries dominate OA production, while low-income countries remain largely absent.

(3) Challenges & opportunities:

The Global South’s OA landscape is marked by fragmentation and geographical inequality. Despite promising growth in select countries, most Global South nations remain marginalized. Expanded support, infrastructure, and inclusive OA policies are needed to close the gap and foster broader global participation.

The dataset is available at https://doi.org/10.57745/9OKWTP

👉 About the authors

Joachim Schöpfel

Joachim Schöpfel

Joachim Schöpfel is an Associate Professor Emeritus in Information and Communication Sciences at the University of Lille and a consultant in scientific and technical information for Ourouk (Paris) and scidecode (Berlin). He is a member of the GERiiCO research laboratory. Holding a PhD in psychology from the University of Hamburg, he worked at the CNRS Institute of Scientific and Technical Information (1991–2008), leading the library, document supply, and e-publishing services. In 2008, he joined the University of Lille, where he directed the first year of the Information-Document Master’s program (2008–2024), led the information sciences department (2009–2012), and headed the Atelier National de Reproduction des Thèses (ANRT) (2012–2017). He has participated in Erasmus exchanges in Slovenia and Germany and lectured in Scientific Data Management at Sorbonne and Montpellier. Author of over 300 publications, his research focuses on scientific information, open science, data, and research information management. He serves on the boards of euroCRIS, ADBS, and Savoir Apprendre (Exploradôme).

Publications: https://cv.archives-ouvertes.fr/joachim-schopfel
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4000-807X
Profile: https://pro.univ-lille.fr/joachim-schopfel/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/schopfel/


Hélène Prost

Hélène Prost

Hélène Prost is a retired librarian at the Institute of Scientific and Technical Information (CNRS)  and an associate member of the GERiiCO research laboratory (University of Lille). She is interested in the empirical sciences of information and documentation and statistical data analysis. She participates in research projects on collection evaluation, usage analysis, grey literature, research data management and open access, and is the author of several publications.

Publications: https://cv.hal.science/helene-prost
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7982-2765


Behrooz Rasuli

Behrooz Rasuli

Behrooz Rasuli holds a PhD in Information Science, and he is an Assistant Professor and Visibility and Open Science Consultant at the Iranian Research Institute for Information Science and Technology (IranDoc). His scholarly work focuses on Open Science, specializing in Scholarly Communication, Open Access, and Research Evaluation and Impact.

Publications: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=bMXiQ4AAAAAJ
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6091-6967
Profile: https://irandoc.ac.ir/u/b-rasuli
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/behrooz-rasuli-b5b9a428/

👉 Registration Link
https://unilu.webex.com/weblink/register/rd35837e1bd6b2526a3f19c369a8101b1

👉 Please see also the full overview of all upcoming talks in the series.

We’re very much looking forward to her contribution and the opportunity to welcome participants from around the globe.


OpenEdition suggests that you cite this post as follows:
Ulrich Herb (October 7, 2025). The Global South’s Role in Shaping the Open Science Paradigm. Open Divide. Retrieved November 16, 2025 from https://opendivide.hypotheses.org/563


Published by Ulrich Herb

Graduate sociologist, information scientist (PhD degree), associate of scidecode science consulting – De Castro, Herb, Rothfritz GbR, working for the Saarland University and State Library (Germany)

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