BMJ Publishing: Hybrid Journals in Transformative Agreements
How open are BMJ Publishing’s hybrid journals included in transformative agreements, as listed by the cOAlition S Journal Checker Tool? You can analyse progress made over time by open license, publisher and country. You can also monitor the availability of publisher-provided metadata in Crossref.
The share of Open Access articles with a Creative Commons license in 44 hybrid journals is as follows:
2017-2025
| Global | Germany* |
| 8.8% | 17.2% |
| 12K out of 137K | 527 out of 3K |
2024
| Global | Germany* |
| 12% | 26.6% |
| 2K out of 15K | 89 out of 334 |
*Journal articles from lead authors based in Germany. Country affiliation data derived from OpenAlex.
Creative Commons licenses over time
Percentage of Open Access in BMJ Publishing hybrid journals included in transformative agreements by Creative Commons license types as provided by Crossref.
*Journal articles from lead authors based in Germany. Country affiliation data derived from OpenAlex.
Publishing market
Hybrid journal portfolio analysis, showing publishing market shares in terms of total and Open Access article volume. Dashed lines represent median OA percentage (red) and median publication output (orange). Note that only hybrid journals included in transformative agreements are shown.
*Journal articles from lead authors based in Germany. Country affiliation data derived from OpenAlex.
Country view
This section shows how hybrid open access has been adopted in different parts of the world. The analysis is based on the country affiliation of lead authors. Lead authors are the first named authors of scholarly articles, who have typically conducted most of the research presented in the article, although the role of lead authors can vary across disciplines. We used OpenAlex as a data source to determine the affiliation of lead authors.
Open Access in hybrid journals by country
Open Access uptake in hybrid journals with a Creative Commons license per country. Showing the Top 20 most productive countries in terms of articles published in BMJ Publishing hybrid journals included in transformative agreements between 2017 and 2025. The analysis is based on lead author country affiliations.
Country league
Publication volume and Open Access share per country in BMJ Publishing hybrid journals included in transformative agreements. You can search for specific countries, and filter by publisher and publication year. The analysis is based on country-affiliations of lead authors.
Open metadata
Open and comprehensive metadata is a key requirement of many transformative agreements. The following tables illustrate potential gaps in Crossref metadata for Open Access articles in hybrid journals included in transformative agreements.
License metadata gaps
BMJ Publishing: Comparison of open licence metadata in Crossref with Unpaywall via OpenAlex per year. You can compare global metrics with metrics only for articles by lead authors based in Germany. In addition to Crossref licence information, Unpaywall also analyses publisher websites to determine whether an article has been published under an open content licence. More Open Access articles derived from Crossref may indicate a delay between metadata changes and Unpaywall-indexing, while more Open Access articles identified by Unpaywall suggest that publishers have not deposited licensing metadata in Crossref for all articles.
*Journal articles from lead authors based in Germany. Country affiliation data derived from OpenAlex.
Crossref metadata coverage
This table shows the proportion of Crossref metadata that is publicly available for Open Access articles in hybrid journals included in transformative agreements. Publishers can use Crossref to share information about Text and Data Mining (TDM), authors (ORCID) and funding. They can also open up abstracts and reference lists through Crossref.
Journal table
BMJ Publishing: This table presents the publication volume and Open Access share by hybrid journal between 2017 and 2025, comparing global metrics with metrics only for articles by lead authors based in Germany. Charts show the yearly Open Access share. You can search for journals or select a table header to sort by journal name or a metric.
Dashboard last compiled on 14 April, 2025.