Open access (OA) is reshaping the future of healthcare publishing — and Wolters Kluwer is at the forefront of that change. For us, open access is a commitment to accessibility, impact, and global reach. By opening up science, we help accelerate medical innovation and improve patient outcomes worldwide.
Today, 68 percent of our journals are fully open access1, and OA options are available across our portfolio. Drawing on the strengths of Lippincott®, renowned for practice-shaping, peer-reviewed healthcare research, and Medknow, a leader in community-driven, affordable open access, we offer one of the largest healthcare-focused open access portfolios worldwide.
The scale of our program is matched by its impact: over 305,000 OA articles published in the past five years, 160+ OA journals ranked in the top two quartiles by Journal Impact Factor (JIF) as measured by the 2024 Journal Citation Reports, and 20 million full-text views in 2024 across fully OA journals. This combination of reach, rigor, and visibility ensures that healthcare knowledge is shared more broadly — and benefits more people, than ever before.
Our open access story is one of steady growth and purpose. It began in 2011 with the acquisition of Medknow, one of the pioneers in community-driven OA publishing. Since then, Wolters Kluwer has built one of the world’s largest healthcare-focused open access portfolios — powered by both Medknow and Lippincott®.
Together, these two publishing arms form the foundation of Wolters Kluwer’s open access framework: Medknow brings deep expertise in community publishing, while Lippincott® is a globally trusted brand for peer-reviewed healthcare research that informs clinical practice and policy. Through this combined effort, we have developed an open access approach that builds on clinical authority and global health leadership to deliver accessibility and support community publishing.
2011
Our OA journey begins: Wolters Kluwer acquires Medknow, one of the earliest innovators in community-driven open access.
2015
Flip of Medicine: A highly respected general medicine title transforms to fully Open Access becoming our
flagship multidisciplinary journal.
2015
Scaling up: Medknow expands its Diamond OA model, opening doors for authors across the Global South.
2018
Global credibility: Lippincott strengthens its OA offerings, ensuring practice-shaping health research is
accessible worldwide.
2020
Adoption: Wolters Kluwer now offers an OA option across its research journals, giving authors more
flexibility and choice.
2023
Trusted impact: More than 50 percent of all Wolters Kluwer publications are OA, with
160+ journals ranked in JCR Q1-Q2.
2024 - 2025
The journey continues: Today, 68 percent of our journals are fully OA2, and OA routes are available across
our portfolio — a dual strategy of credibility and equity.
Wolters Kluwer publishes 880+ journals — making ours one of the largest healthcare-focused portfolios in the world. More than two-thirds (68 percent) are fully open access2, and half (50 percent) operate under Diamond OA models, where authors publish without fees.
This breadth means researchers can choose the model, price point, and brand that best fits their needs — with options that range from long-established clinical titles to community-focused journals that broaden participation. All our journals are supported by rigorous editorial standards and a shared commitment to advancing healthcare knowledge.
Our commitment extends beyond journals to institutional partnerships. Our Lippincott portfolio now supports 15 read-and-publish agreements across 13 countries and 101 institutions. In 2024 alone, these agreements funded more than 1,000 APCs, making open access publishing simpler and more affordable for authors worldwide. See if your institution already has a Read and Publish deal in place.
Over the past five years, more than 305,000 articles have been published open access with Wolters Kluwer, representing over half of our total publishing output. This places us among the leading health sciences publishers worldwide.
Our OA share grew steadily between 2020 and 2023, peaking at 57 percent. In 2024, output declined in line with a market-wide adjustment across the health sciences, where overall OA outputs dropped from 63 percent to 49 percent. Read more about the 2020–2024 trends.
Our OA output spans every area of health sciences (across 68 categories in SCIE). In 2024, General Medicine accounted for 70 percent of our output, followed by Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (7 percent), Health Professions (4 percent), and Dentistry (4 percent). Smaller shares came from Psychology, Neuroscience, Nursing, and other allied fields.
But scale tells only part of the story. Wolters Kluwer open access articles are cited twice as often as paywalled articles3, underscoring the visibility and influence of the research we publish. What distinguishes Wolters Kluwer is how we balance growth with equity, ensuring quality, and extending the reach of research.
These three elements — accessible publishing, trusted quality, and broad global readership — show the full impact of our open access program.
Leading the way with Diamond open access
We are committed to advancing open access in ways that ensure it is accessible for all. More than 25 percent of our OA output is published under Diamond OA models — far above sector averages. Medknow drives this leadership, with 78 percent of its journals operating under Diamond OA.
This model enables thousands of authors — particularly in regions where funding is limited — to publish without cost barriers, while still benefiting from rigorous peer review and global visibility. To further reduce financial obstacles, we issued more than 3,000 waivers and discounts in 2024 alone.
This included over 1,600 Research4Life waivers and discounts (with more than 1,340 being full waivers), as well as 1,475+ additional waivers through member, promotional, and other initiatives — of which 700+ were full waivers.
These efforts ensure that researchers from a wide range of countries and institutions can access open access publishing opportunities, regardless of their financial circumstances.'
Over 150 Wolters Kluwer journals ranked in the top two quartiles of the Journal Citation Reports.
High visibility is matched by high standards. In the 2024 Journal Citation Reports, 162 Wolters Kluwer journals were ranked in the top two quartiles. Over the past five years, our OA articles received over 1.9 million citations, reinforcing their scholarly influence and value to the research community.
Lippincott® journals lead this performance, with more than half of OA-eligible titles ranked in Q1 or Q2.
Global attention: Over 115,000 mentions of Wolters Kluwer open access research in 2024.
The influence of open access goes far beyond the academic record. In 2024 alone, Wolters Kluwer OA articles generated 115,807 mentions across news, social, and policy sources. They were also viewed nearly 20 million times worldwide, including 8.4 million from Lippincott journals and 11.3 million from Medknow.
This underscores how our open access publishing connects research with wider audiences — from clinical communities to the public — helping healthcare knowledge shape conversations and practice across the globe.
Open access in the health sciences has expanded rapidly over the past five years, but growth has not been linear. Between 2020 and 2023, Wolters Kluwer recorded steady increases in OA publishing, peaking at 56.5 percent of our output in 2023.
In 2024, a shift occurred across the entire sector4. Within health sciences, OA output dropped from 63.1 percent to 49.1 percent. Wolters Kluwer’s share followed this same pattern, declining from its 2023 peak to 50.1 percent in 2024.
This context matters: it shows that while volumes fluctuate, Wolters Kluwer’s long-term trajectory is one of growth and resilience. Our leadership is not just about keeping pace with industry shifts but about pairing scale with equity, quality, and reach.
In 2024, authors from more than 185 countries published open access with Wolters Kluwer. More than 60 percent of these OA articles came from the Global South, with 39 percent from lower- and middle-income countries as classified by the OECD. This level of representation makes Wolters Kluwer one of the most inclusive publishers in the health sciences and reflects deliberate pathways that lower barriers to publication and strengthen global equity in research.
The distribution reflects both scale and balance. India accounted for 31 percent of our OA output, followed by the United States at 23 percent and China at 16 percent. Strong contributions also came from the United Kingdom, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Egypt, and Canada, alongside a long tail of research communities across every continent.
At the institutional level, our partnerships span from India’s leading public health agencies and medical universities to Harvard University and Mass General Brigham in the United States. Weatherford College, the Government of India, and the indian Ministry of Health and Family Welfare were among the most prolific contributors in 2024, underscoring how local institutions and global research leaders alike rely on Wolters Kluwer to share their work.
Competitor comparisons highlight this diversity. While some publishers draw a higher proportion of output from a narrow set of countries, Wolters Kluwer’s profile reflects a broad base across the Global South and high-income regions alike.
Open access is more than a publishing model — it is a partnership with the authors and institutions who choose to publish with us. That partnership is built on two pillars: supportive workflows and experience.
Our systems are designed to make open access seamless. Through integration with CCC Rightslink, our integrated systems are designed to make open access publishing seamless, enabling frictionless publishing and compliance with funder and institutional mandates and policies.
Affordability and smooth workflows translate into high satisfaction scores. In 2024, authors publishing open access with Wolters Kluwer reported a Net Promoter Score of +60 for accepted submissions in full OA and Diamond OA journals.
Open access drives real-world progress. In 2024, 67 percent of Wolters Kluwer OA articles mapped to a United Nations Sustainable Development Goal (SDG), showing how research published with us contributes directly to solving global challenges. Most prominently, 65 percent of those articles advanced SDG 3: Good Health and Well-Being, underlining our role in shaping clinical practice, patient care, and public health policy.
Comparisons across major publishers highlight our position within the wider open access landscape. In 2024, the proportion of OA articles linked to the UN Sustainable Development Goals ranged from around 65 percent to just over 70 percent among the largest global publishers. In each case, SDG 3: Good Health and Well-Being was the leading area, though others placed greater emphasis on goals such as Zero Hunger or Quality Education. Wolters Kluwer’s portfolio shows the strongest alignment with Good Health and Well-Being, reflecting our distinct focus on healthcare research.
We are committed to expanding open access so that trusted healthcare research is available to everyone who needs it. That commitment means increasing volumes of OA content in our existing journals, the launch of new OA journals, continued growth in submissions across our existing portfolio, and expansion of read-and-publish agreements with institutions and consortia worldwide.
We are also focused on flexibility and choice. Authors and institutions benefit from transparent licensing options and seamless workflows that deliver frictionless compliance with funder and institutional mandates and policies.
By pairing workflow innovation with equitable publishing models such as Diamond OA, Wolters Kluwer will continue to scale open access responsibly — supporting authors, librarians, and healthcare communities as they drive medical innovation and improve patient outcomes.
Data in this report draws on sources including OpenAlex, Altmetric Explorer, COUNTER usage statistics, and Wolters Kluwer’s internal publishing systems. Article-to-SDG mapping follows UN guidelines.
