In an article titled “A decade of open access policy at the Gates Foundation based on experimentation, evidence and evolution” published in Insights (2025), Senior Officer of Knowledge and Research Services with the Gates Foundation, Ashley Farley, examines the foundation’s ten-year journey to implement and refine its Open Access (OA) policy.

In 2015, the Gates Foundation began mandating that all research articles funded by the foundation be openly accessible upon publication under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license. This initiative aimed to dismantle paywalls, fostering global collaboration and innovation, particularly benefiting researchers in low- and middle-income countries. The initial implementation faced hurdles, wrote Farley, notably the limited support for OA among prestigious journals; but despite these challenges, the foundation actively educated grantees on OA options and collaborated with other funders to advocate for systemic change. Between 2015 and 2017, OA publications funded by the foundation increased from 986 to 2,000, reflecting growing momentum in the OA movement.

In 2017, the foundation partnered with F1000Research to launch Gates Open Research (GOR), an innovative platform featuring post-publication peer review. GOR emphasized transparency, rapid dissemination, and open data sharing, aligning with the foundation’s commitment to open science. The platform also supported the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA), challenging traditional metrics like the journal impact factor.

Aligning with Plan S principles in 2021, the foundation revised its OA policy to include the Rights Retention Strategy (RRS), ensuring authors retained sufficient rights to make their work openly accessible. This shift emphasized repository deposits of author-accepted manuscripts, expanding publishing options while maintaining compliance with OA mandates.

Ms. Farley said the Gates Foundation continues to adapt its OA policy to address the evolving needs of the scholarly ecosystem, aiming to enhance inclusivity and equity in research dissemination, particularly by supporting scientists in underrepresented regions. Ms. Farley has been speaker and participant in CNTR’s Design for Implementation conference series.

Interested in reading the full article? Access it via UKSG Insights.