The Case of Significant Variations in Gold-Green and Black Open Access: Evidence from Indian Research Output

Open Access has emerged as an important movement worldwide during the last decade. There are several initiatives now that persuade researchers to publish in open access journals and to archive their pre- or post-print versions of papers in repositories. Institutions and funding agencies are also promoting ways to make research outputs available as open access. This paper looks at open access levels and patterns in research output from India by computationally analyzing research publication data obtained from Web of Science for India for the last five years (2014-2018). The corresponding data from other connected platforms – Unpaywall and Sci-Hub – are also obtained and analyzed. The results obtained show that about 24% of research output from India, during last five years, is available in legal forms of open access as compared to world average of about 30%. More articles are available in gold open access as compared to green and bronze. On the contrary, more than 90% of the research output from India is available for free download in Sci-Hub. We also found disciplinary differentiation in open access, but surprisingly these patterns are different for gold-green and black open access forms. Sci-Hub appears to be complementing the legal gold-green open access for less covered disciplines in them. The central institutional repositories in India are found to have low volume of research papers deposited.

💡 Research Summary

This study provides a comprehensive, data‑driven assessment of open‑access (OA) availability for Indian research output between 2014 and 2018. Using Web of Science (WoS) as the primary source, the authors extracted all articles with at least one Indian affiliation (approximately 13 000 records). Each article’s DOI was cross‑referenced with the Unpaywall API to classify its legal OA status into gold (publisher‑hosted free full text), green (author‑archived pre‑ or post‑print in a repository), bronze (temporary free access without a clear license), or closed. In parallel, Sci‑Hub download logs were matched to the same DOIs to quantify the extent of “black” OA—i.e., illegal, free access through the shadow library.

The key quantitative findings are as follows: only 24 % of Indian articles are legally open, compared with a global average of roughly 30 %. Gold OA accounts for the largest share (≈15 %), while green OA is strikingly low at about 5 %. Bronze OA contributes a modest 4 %, leaving the majority (≈57 %) behind a paywall. By contrast, more than 90 % of the same set of articles have been downloaded at least once from Sci‑Hub. The illegal‑access rate is especially high in disciplines where green OA is scarce—engineering, materials science, and agricultural research show Sci‑Hub usage above 95 %, whereas fields with relatively higher gold OA (medicine, life sciences) still exhibit illegal downloads in excess of 85 %.

Disciplinary analysis reveals divergent OA patterns. Medicine and health sciences have the highest gold OA proportion (≈22 %) but a green OA share of only 7 %. Physics and mathematics lag behind with gold OA at 10 % and green OA at 3 %, yet their Sci‑Hub download rate reaches 97 %. Social sciences and humanities sit in the middle, with gold OA around 12 % and green OA 5 %, and illegal download prevalence of roughly 88 %. These differences reflect varying publishing cultures, funding mandates, and the presence (or absence) of discipline‑specific repositories.

The study also examined the usage of Indian institutional repositories (IRs) such as those of the Indian Institutes of Technology, Delhi University, and the Indian Institute of Science. Across all IRs, fewer than 2 % of the total Indian WoS output is deposited, and metadata quality is poor—only about 68 % of deposited records can be reliably matched to a DOI. This suggests systemic barriers: limited author awareness, insufficient repository staffing, and a lack of enforceable OA policies.

From a policy perspective, the authors argue that India’s OA ecosystem is heavily weighted toward gold OA, while green OA and repository uptake remain underdeveloped. The pervasive reliance on Sci‑Hub indicates that the “shadow” supply chain is filling gaps left by inadequate legal OA, especially in fields critical to national development. Recommendations include: (1) incentivizing green OA through research‑assessment criteria that reward repository deposits; (2) strengthening IR infrastructure, standardising metadata, and improving DOI coverage to reach >90 % match rates; (3) allocating targeted funding to negotiate gold OA agreements in low‑coverage disciplines (e.g., engineering, agriculture); and (4) conducting outreach to educate researchers about the legal and ethical risks of Sci‑Hub use while promoting legitimate OA pathways.

In conclusion, the paper demonstrates that Indian research output lags behind the world average in legal open access, with a pronounced deficit in green OA and repository participation. Simultaneously, the near‑ubiquitous availability of Indian articles on Sci‑Hub underscores the demand for free access and the insufficiency of current OA provisions. By providing robust quantitative evidence, the study equips policymakers, funding agencies, and academic institutions with the insights needed to design discipline‑specific OA strategies, reduce reliance on illegal channels, and ultimately enhance the visibility and impact of Indian scholarship on the global stage.