The French Open Science Monitor
The 2025 edition of the Open Science Barometer (OSB) has revealed that 59% of the clinical trials completed between 2012 and 2021 share their results compared to the previous figures of 52% in 2022 and 54% in 2024. This increase is mainly due to progress in academic reporting of clinical trial results.
Among the publications released in 2024 that mention the creation of a dataset, the proportion of those stating its availability is at 27% – an increase of 2 percentage points compared to the year before. This does not necessarily mean that the data is actually shared but the increase in its prevalence is a sign of a gradual cultural shift in data management and sharing practices related to scientific publications.
Since 2022, over 40% of French publications each year have mentioned the use of code or software. Software plays a central role as a tool, result or subject of research across all disciplines. Since last year, there has been a 2-point increase in the proportion of French publications that mention the creation of code or software and explicitly state that the dataset is being shared.
Finally, the plateau observed in recent years as regards access to publications has been confirmed with a rate of 62% reported in 2025.
The French Open Science Monitor was created in 2018 to measure the evolution of open access to French scientific research results. It is a steering tool that supports those formulating open science policies and wishing to assess their subsequent impact. Its creation was set out in the National Plan for Open Science and it is developed by the French Ministry of Higher Education and Research in partnership with the Inria and the Université de Lorraine. In 2021, it received funding from the France Relance national recovery plan
The Monitor initially concentrated on French scientific publications but has now been enriched with a section on health research measuring the sharing of results of clinical trials and observational studies. In 2022, funding from the France Relance recovery plan enabled a beta version of the Monitor to be developed that includes new indicators on research data, codes and software working with a methodology based on machine learning. Its construction is based on open data notably from Unpaywall, a global metadata database on scientific publications that provides information on the status of open publications. It also features a website with dozens of indicators grouped into themes along with interactive visualisation functions. The data underpinning the Monitor are made available under an open licence, its code is open and a detailed presentation of its methodology is given in a publication that is itself available in open access.
Users can adapt the Monitor to create a local version. Currently, over 70 organisations, universities, schools and laboratories have done so using a simple approach made available to them by the project team.
Data and code : https://barometredelascienceouverte.esr.gouv.fr/a-propos/opendata
Methodology : https://barometredelascienceouverte.esr.gouv.fr/about/methodology
See the Flash Note from the Ministry of Higher Education and Research statistical service (in French): https://www.enseignementsup-recherche.gouv.fr/fr/le-barometre-francais-de-la-science-ouverte-2025-100994