---
title: "Open access AI journals: share of open papers, 2023–2025"
description: "Of the 47,799 papers the 29 tracked AI journals published in 2023–2025, 35% are open access (diamond 0%, gold 1%, hybrid 15%, bronze 3% and green 16%). The open-access share went from 29% in 2017 to 33% in 2025."
url: https://scholar4ai.com/rankings/open-access/ai
markdown_url: https://scholar4ai.com/rankings/open-access/ai.md
license: CC BY-NC 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/)
share_text: "Of the 47,799 papers the 29 tracked AI journals published in 2023–2025, 35% are open access (diamond 0%, gold 1%, hybrid 15%, bronze 3% and green 16%). The open-access share went from 29% in 2017 to 33% in 2025. (as of 2026-10-31)"
data_url: https://scholar4ai.com/data/rankings.json
updated: 2026-10-31T19:11:11+09:00
window: 2026-10-02 to 2026-10-31
source: OpenAlex (CC0)
---

# Open access in AI journals

The 29 tracked AI journals ranked by the share of their 2023–2025 papers that are open access, with each status's share. Open-access status as OpenAlex reports it for each paper (diamond: published in an open-access journal that charges authors no fee; gold: published in an open-access journal; hybrid: open under a licence in a subscription journal; bronze: free to read on the publisher's site without an open licence; green: only a free copy in a repository; closed: no free copy found). Papers count by publication year; the share is of the papers whose status is known.

By category: [Finance](https://scholar4ai.com/rankings/open-access/finance.md) · [Accounting](https://scholar4ai.com/rankings/open-access/accounting.md) · [Economics](https://scholar4ai.com/rankings/open-access/economics.md) · [Health Economics and Policy](https://scholar4ai.com/rankings/open-access/health-economics-and-policy.md) · [Management](https://scholar4ai.com/rankings/open-access/management.md) · [Marketing](https://scholar4ai.com/rankings/open-access/marketing.md) · [Information Systems](https://scholar4ai.com/rankings/open-access/information-systems.md) · [Tourism and Hospitality](https://scholar4ai.com/rankings/open-access/tourism-and-hospitality.md) · [Higher Education and Research](https://scholar4ai.com/rankings/open-access/higher-education-and-research.md) · [Operations Research](https://scholar4ai.com/rankings/open-access/operations-research.md) · [Statistics](https://scholar4ai.com/rankings/open-access/statistics.md) · [AI](https://scholar4ai.com/rankings/open-access/ai.md)

## Key findings

- Of the 47,799 papers the 29 tracked AI journals published in 2023–2025, 35% are open access (diamond 0%, gold 1%, hybrid 15%, bronze 3% and green 16%).
- The open-access share went from 29% in 2017 to 33% in 2025.
- The most open journal is Journal Of Big Data (100%), followed by Artificial Intelligence Review (86%) and Machine Learning (85%); the least open is IEEE Transactions on Fuzzy Systems (13%).

*Tracked AI journals by open-access share of their 2023–2025 papers (OpenAlex)*

| # | Journal | Papers 2023–2025 | Open access | Diamond | Gold | Hybrid | Bronze | Green | Closed |
|---:|---|---:|---:|---:|---:|---:|---:|---:|---:|
| 1 | [Journal Of Big Data](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/journal-of-big-data.md) | 652 | 100% | 0% | 100% | 0% | 0% | 0% | 0% |
| 2 | [Artificial Intelligence Review](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/artificial-intelligence-review.md) | 1,068 | 86% | 0% | 0% | 80% | 3% | 3% | 14% |
| 3 | [Machine Learning](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/machine-learning.md) | 660 | 85% | 0% | 0% | 49% | 25% | 10% | 15% |
| 4 | [Journal of Automated Reasoning](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/journal-of-automated-reasoning.md) | 95 | 83% | 0% | 0% | 62% | 2% | 19% | 17% |
| 5 | [Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/autonomous-agents-and-multi-agent-systems.md) | 131 | 80% | 0% | 0% | 57% | 0% | 23% | 20% |
| 6 | [AI & Society](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/ai-society.md) | 1,178 | 73% | 0% | 0% | 45% | 23% | 5% | 27% |
| 7 | [Artificial Intelligence](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/artificial-intelligence.md) | 380 | 67% | 0% | 0% | 45% | 7% | 14% | 33% |
| 8 | [Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/data-mining-and-knowledge-discovery.md) | 276 | 67% | 0% | 0% | 48% | 3% | 16% | 33% |
| 9 | [Nature Machine Intelligence](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/nature-machine-intelligence.md) | 566 | 64% | 0% | 0% | 28% | 7% | 29% | 36% |
| 10 | [Language Resources and Evaluation](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/language-resources-and-evaluation.md) | 251 | 63% | 0% | 0% | 45% | 2% | 16% | 37% |
| 11 | [International Journal of Computer Vision](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/international-journal-of-computer-vision.md) | 870 | 63% | 0% | 0% | 22% | 4% | 37% | 37% |
| 12 | [IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/ieee-transactions-on-pattern-analysis-and-machine-intelligence.md) | 2,298 | 57% | 0% | 0% | 7% | 0% | 50% | 43% |
| 13 | [International Journal of Approximate Reasoning](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/international-journal-of-approximate-reasoning.md) | 525 | 52% | 0% | 0% | 30% | 5% | 17% | 48% |
| 14 | [Computer Speech & Language](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/computer-speech-language.md) | 308 | 44% | 0% | 0% | 23% | 2% | 18% | 56% |
| 15 | [Neural Computing and Applications](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/neural-computing-and-applications.md) | 3,369 | 34% | 0% | 0% | 21% | 7% | 7% | 66% |
| 16 | [Neural Networks](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/neural-networks.md) | 2,906 | 33% | 0% | 0% | 11% | 2% | 19% | 67% |
| 17 | [Pattern Recognition](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/pattern-recognition.md) | 3,322 | 32% | 0% | 0% | 9% | 2% | 21% | 68% |
| 18 | [Knowledge and Information Systems](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/knowledge-and-information-systems.md) | 829 | 32% | 0% | 0% | 17% | 2% | 14% | 68% |
| 19 | [IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computation](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/ieee-transactions-on-evolutionary-computation.md) | 584 | 32% | 0% | 0% | 6% | 8% | 18% | 68% |
| 20 | [Information Fusion](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/information-fusion.md) | 2,044 | 32% | 0% | 0% | 14% | 1% | 17% | 68% |
| 21 | [IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/ieee-transactions-on-knowledge-and-data-engineering.md) | 1,446 | 32% | 0% | 0% | 4% | 0% | 28% | 68% |
| 22 | [IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks and Learning Systems](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/ieee-transactions-on-neural-networks-and-learning-systems.md) | 2,685 | 30% | 0% | 0% | 4% | 2% | 24% | 70% |
| 23 | [Cognitive Computation](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/cognitive-computation.md) | 438 | 30% | 0% | 0% | 21% | 2% | 7% | 70% |
| 24 | [IEEE Transactions on Artificial Intelligence](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/ieee-transactions-on-artificial-intelligence.md) | 1,151 | 27% | 0% | 0% | 4% | 3% | 20% | 73% |
| 25 | [Knowledge-Based Systems](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/knowledge-based-systems.md) | 4,346 | 26% | 0% | 0% | 11% | 1% | 14% | 74% |
| 26 | [Expert Systems with Applications](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/expert-systems-with-applications.md) | 10,390 | 25% | 0% | 0% | 11% | 1% | 13% | 75% |
| 27 | [Applied Intelligence](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/applied-intelligence.md) | 2,632 | 18% | 0% | 0% | 10% | 2% | 6% | 82% |
| 28 | [Information Processing & Management](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/information-processing-management.md) | 1,141 | 16% | 0% | 0% | 10% | 1% | 6% | 84% |
| 29 | [IEEE Transactions on Fuzzy Systems](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/ieee-transactions-on-fuzzy-systems.md) | 1,258 | 13% | 0% | 0% | 2% | 4% | 7% | 87% |

## By year

*All tracked AI journals: papers per year by open-access status*

| Year | Papers | Open access | Diamond | Gold | Hybrid | Bronze | Green | Closed |
|---|---:|---:|---:|---:|---:|---:|---:|---:|
| 2017 | 5,465 | 29% | 0% | 1% | 3% | 9% | 15% | 71% |
| 2018 | 5,503 | 31% | 0% | 1% | 4% | 9% | 17% | 69% |
| 2019 | 6,405 | 36% | 0% | 2% | 5% | 11% | 18% | 64% |
| 2020 | 8,527 | 33% | 0% | 1% | 6% | 9% | 16% | 67% |
| 2021 | 10,565 | 38% | 0% | 2% | 10% | 9% | 17% | 62% |
| 2022 | 13,277 | 36% | 0% | 1% | 12% | 8% | 16% | 64% |
| 2023 | 13,689 | 36% | 0% | 1% | 13% | 5% | 17% | 64% |
| 2024 | 15,401 | 37% | 0% | 1% | 16% | 4% | 16% | 63% |
| 2025 | 18,709 | 33% | 0% | 2% | 15% | 1% | 16% | 67% |
| 2026 (so far) | 16,735 | 30% | 0% | 1% | 15% | 1% | 13% | 70% |

## Cite this page

Scholar4AI. (2026). Open access in AI journals. Journal Research Rankings. Retrieved October 31, 2026, from https://scholar4ai.com/rankings/open-access/ai

```bibtex
@misc{scholar4ai-rankings-open-access-ai,
  author = {{Scholar4AI}},
  title = {Open access in AI journals},
  year = {2026},
  howpublished = {\url{https://scholar4ai.com/rankings/open-access/ai}},
  urldate = {2026-10-31},
  note = {Journal Research Rankings; data from OpenAlex (CC0); licensed CC BY-NC 4.0}
}
```

License: CC BY-NC 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).