Mexico is a leader of Open Access in Latin America. It is part of and plays a leading role in various international initiatives. Further, it has a national mandate that all publicly funded research must be made Open Access.

We outline the history of Mexico’s mandates and its current policies for those looking to submit research or read it.

Open Access is the new paradigm

Open Access refers to a publishing model for scholarly research that makes information immediately available to readers at no cost. This research is also free to reuse for scholarly purposes.

The benefits of publishing Open Access include increased visibility of scientific work, which can lead to more citations and a greater impact, reaching a wider audience, advancing scientific innovation, retaining copyrights, and increasing the potential for collaboration and recognition. Open Access can also help institutions like universities and research agencies in low- and middle-income countries by removing any price barriers to accessing academic research.

History of Open Access in Mexico

There have been a range of open science initiatives over the last 20 years. Here is a brief history of Open Access in Mexico:

• 1997: Latindex is launched by the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). This is a network of institutions and serves as a hub for academic journals.
• 2002: UNAM and other Mexican institutions signed the landmark Budapest Open Access Initiative.
• 2006: UNAM launched its open institutional repository TESIUNAM for theses and dissertations.
• 2010: Mexico joined the Latin American Repository Network (Red de Repositorios Latinoamericanos), a regional network of repositories formed in Chile.
• 2014: The government passed a national OA mandate requiring free access to scientific and academic works made possible by public funding.
• 2014: The National Repository (Repositorio Nacional) is established under the supervision of the National Council of Science and Technology (Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología (CONACYT)) to centralise OA content from Mexican institutions.
• 2015: AmeliCA (Open Knowledge for Latin America and the Global South) is initiated with Mexico as a founding participant. This initiative promotes non-commercial OA publishing models.
• 2017: CONACYT strengthened requirements for grant recipients, mandating that all publications and data resulting from funded research must be deposited in OA repositories.
• 2022: The National Repository expanded to include datasets and multimedia materials to encourage diverse collaborations.

In the 2000s, Mexico was initially slower to adopt OA, mainly due to challenges such as limited resources and awareness.

However, it has consistently and increasingly participated in international initiatives that have shaped its own OA culture. This culture is centred around its distinct non-commercial OA infrastructure where academic institutions play a leading role.

Current Open Access laws in Mexico

In 2014, the Mexican government passed a law requiring free access to scientific and academic works that received public funding. Funded researchers must publish their work in an OA portal built and managed by CONACYT.

The President explained how the legislation will

further democratize the use of the information to allow Mexican free access to scientific and academic production financed partially or wholly with public funds. That is, a lot of knowledge, research and data online, so that any user can access.

In 2020, Mexico also signed the UNESCO Recommendation on Open Science, an international effort that emphasizes the need for equitable, transparent, and accessible scientific knowledge.

By adopting this recommendation, Mexico pledged to enhance the availability of scientific data, publications, and research outputs in an open and accessible manner.

University and repository infrastructure in Mexico

Mexico has a distinctly non-commercial OA infrastructure that is largely maintained by academic and governmental institutions.

The CONACYT institutional repository provides Open Access to information resources derived from scientific, technological, and innovation research projects.

As mentioned, Mexico boasts a robust university system that has played a key role in the promotion of OA.

Leading institutions like UNAM, the Monterrey Institute of Technology (ITESM), and the Autonomous University of Puebla (BUAP) have developed digital repositories and OA publishing platforms.

These universities have made significant strides in creating platforms where research outputs can be shared freely, ensuring that Mexican research reaches a wider audience both nationally and globally.

The UNAM Institutional Repository is one of the largest and most comprehensive in Mexico. This platform hosts a variety of academic content, including theses, dissertations, journal articles, books, and conference proceedings.

Repositorio Nacional

The National Repository is a digital platform that provides OA to various resources of academic, scientific and technological information. As of January 2025, it has 167,814 information resources and is connected to 108 institutional repositories.

Mexico has invested in ensuring university institutions can provide Open Access. Moreover, it has improved the visibility of all the works in these repositories by ensuring they can be easily searched via this National Repository. This, ultimately, can increase impact and improve accessibility even further.

Institutional repositories provide vital benefits for academic publishing, including how they:

1. Maximise search visibility.
2. Increase downloads and citations.
3. Establish clear licensing rights.
4. Disseminate knowledge for the public good.
5. Increase collaboration.

In short, Mexico’s investment in repositories serves as a key path towards equity and innovation.

International initiatives

Mexico is an active participant in various international open science agreements that have accelerated the adoption of OA principles.

For example, Mexico has participated in initiatives such as the Latin American Open Science Platform (CLACSO) and the OpenAIRE network.

These international collaborations support the development of OA practices in Latin America and encourage the sharing of research outputs across borders, facilitating greater knowledge exchange among scientists and researchers globally.

These agreements have helped shape Mexico’s approach to OA, with increasing recognition that international collaboration is essential for driving meaningful progress in scientific openness.

Red de Repositorios Latinoamericanos

The Latin American Repository Network portal was developed in 2006 by the University of Chile through its Directorate of Information Services and Libraries (SISIB).

It provides access to publications located in different repositories across Latin American countries.

It currently has more than 8,000,000 publications from more than 500 institutions in 21 countries. Mexico joined the initiative in 2010.

Latindex

Latindex was developed in 1995 by UNAM and expanded to become a regional cooperation network in 1997.

It features a network of institutions that coordinate to gather and disseminate information on scientific publications produced in Latin America.

It actively disseminates, makes accessible, and improves the quality of academic journals published in the region.

AmeliCA

AmeliCA Open Science is a collaborative initiative designed to promote and strengthen the development of open science. It is controlled by an inter-institutional academy and was created in response to the challenges of delivering OA in Latin America and the Global South.

It has dozens of member institutions and dedicated itself to expanding its reach to Africa and Asia in 2023.

Its governing principles are

• Universal law.
• Equity, diversity, and multilingualism.
• Property of the academy and heritage of humanity.
• Recognition and appreciation.

LA Referencia

The Latin American Network for Open Science, or simply LA Referencia, supports national Open Access strategies in Latin America and Spain. It provides interoperability standards and access to scientific articles and theses.

There are over 100 universities and research institutions across 10 countries participating in the initiative.

Open educational resources

MéxicoX is a platform for massive open online courses that was launched in 2015.

The open educational resource platform was launched by the Ministry of Public Education and represents one of the most important digital learning communities in the country.

As of January 2025, there are over 2.6 million users enrolled, engaging with content provided by more than 70 allied institutions.

Mexico’s Open Access statistics

Mexico is rapidly moving away from subscription-only to open publication of its scholarly research. Here are some statistics from Scopus:

• 2013: 69% of articles were subscription-only, 6% were green Open Access, and 18% were gold Open Access.
• 2018: 55% of articles were subscription-only, 5% were green Open Access, and 31% were gold Open Access.
• 2023: 42% of articles were subscription-only, 3% were green Open Access, and 49% were gold Open Access.

As you can see, there has been a dramatic increase in gold Open Access publications in Mexico, and a gradual decrease in subscription-only publications. This highlights the success of focusing on building an institutional infrastructure and culture in the country and participating in various initiatives that raise awareness and provide support.

Open Access in Mexico represents an example of how comprehensive and gradual change can lead to results in increasing access to publications.

Future trends

Although OA is not yet fully mandated in all sectors of research, the country’s framework is evolving to make OA an integral part of academic and governmental research culture.

Furthermore, there is a growing infrastructure for the dissemination of Mexican research, and this is highly likely to continue, especially as the country increasing aligns with international Open Science initiatives.

This suggests a future in which the country plays a more prominent role in the global open science movement. Practically, this will likely involve deeper integration of national and regional OA networks. Further collaboration could ensure greater availability of resources for researchers, fostering a more robust and open research ecosystem.

Value of Open Access

All articles published by MDPI are made immediately available worldwide under an Open Access license. This means:

• Everyone has free and unlimited access to the full text of all articles published in MDPI journals;
• Everyone is free to re-use the published material if proper accreditation/citation of the original publication is given;
• Open Access publication is supported by the authors’ institutes or research funding agencies by payment of a comparatively low Article Processing Charge (APC) for accepted articles.

Researchers can satisfy Mexico’s developing Open Access policy and pre-empt any stricter legislation by publishing in an MDPI journal. Alternatively, if you want to publish an early version of your article, try Preprints.org, our service for publishing early versions of research that are not peer-reviewed and report on either ongoing or complete research.

An author from the Autonomous Metropolitan University Iztapalapa Unit described their experience of publishing in Molecules:

The articles that I have published in MDPI journals have a wide diffusion and are cited by other authors as they are open access.

Open Access makes vital information accessible to all readers and researchers and brings together scholars from across the world. Thus, it is ideal for tackling global challenges that require urgent and coordinated attention.

Mexico’s leading scientific organisations are coming together to build a regional path to Open Access. If you want to learn more about Open Access generally, we have several articles that may interest you.

Written in collaboration with Marta Colomer, Public Affairs Specialist.