What Scientific Electronic Library Online does

Scientific Electronic Library Online (SciELO) is a non-profit open access publishing infrastructure network founded in 1997/1998 and headquartered in São Paulo, Brazil. It coordinates a decentralized cooperative of 15 active national journal collections across Latin America, the Iberian Peninsula (Spain, Portugal), and South Africa, with three additional collections in development (Dominican Republic, Venezuela, West Indies). SciELO hosts more than 1,000 peer-reviewed scientific journals spanning Health Sciences (583 journals), Human Sciences (578 journals), Linguistics/Letters/Arts (92 journals), and other subject areas; all content is published under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC BY 4.0) licensing, available free to readers, and authors are not charged article processing charges (APCs) for most journals.

The technical core is the open-source SciELO Publishing Framework, which uses XML/JATS-based markup for article processing, metadata management, and multi-format output (HTML, PDF, EPUB), integrated with Crossref for DOI assignment and citation linking. The product portfolio extends beyond the main SciELO Portal to include SciELO Books (academic monographs), SciELO Preprints (pre-publication server), SciELO Data (research data repository), and BrCris (the Brazilian Scientific Research Information Ecosystem aggregating approximately 16 million publications and 1.5 million researcher profiles). Distribution is exclusively digital and self-serve across country-specific domains (scielo.br, scielo.cl, scielo.org.co, scielo.mx, scielo.pt, scielo.org.za, and others) and through centralized search (search.scielo.org).

SciELO's business model is non-commercial and primarily funded by institutional grants from Brazilian research funding agencies — FAPESP (São Paulo Research Foundation), CAPES (Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel), CNPq (National Council for Scientific and Technological Development), and FAP-UNIFESP — together with technical cooperation from BIREME/PAHO/WHO for the SciELO Saúde Pública public health collection. Revenue is not generated from author fees or subscriptions; the customer base consists of academic institutions, university publishers, researchers, and the broader healthcare/research community across the served geographies.

Name

Scientific Electronic Library Online

Legal name

Scientific Electronic Library Online

Website

https://scielo.org

Company type

Private

Founded year

1998

Operating status

Operating

Headcount range

51–100 employees

Short description

SciELO is a non-profit open access publishing network headquartered in São Paulo that hosts 1,000+ peer-reviewed scientific journals across 15 country collections in Latin America, Spain, Portugal, and South Africa, serving academic institutions, researchers, and the healthcare community free of charge under CC BY 4.0 licensing.

Ownership category

akta.pro rank

Product category

Open Access Scholarly Publishing Platform

NAICS

Newspaper, Periodical, Book, and Directory Publishers (5131), Book Publishers (51313), Web Search Portals, Libraries, Archives, and Other Information Services (519)

SIC

Periodicals: Publishing Or Publishing & Printing (2721)

akta.pro primary industry

Open Access Scholarly Journals & Monographs (EDAGAFAJ)

akta.pro secondary industries

Interdisciplinary & Multidisciplinary Scholarly Publishing (EDAGAFAI), Life Sciences (Biology, Ecology, Agriculture) Scholarly Publishing (EDAGAFAC)

Keywords

• Open access publishing
• Scientific journals
• Scholarly communication
• Academic publishing platform
• Research repository

Headquarters

HQ city

São Paulo

HQ country

Brazil

HQ region

Latin America

Offices1 record

Markets served

GTM type

B2B

Offering type

Software

Cost components

Technology or R&D, Personnel, Infrastructure, Operations

Revenue model

1. Institutional Funding: SciELO operates as a non-commercial open access program primarily funded through institutional support from Brazilian research funding agencies: FAPESP (São Paulo Research Foundation), CAPES (Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel), CNPq (National Council for Scientific and Technological Development), FAP-UNIFESP (Foundation for Support to Federal University of São Paulo), and BIREME/PAHO/WHO (Latin American and Caribbean Center on Health Sciences Information). Funding covers infrastructure, operations, and national network coordination.
2. Open Access Publishing (Free for Authors): Scientific journals published on SciELO are available open access to readers at no charge. Authors do not pay article processing charges (APC) for most journals, distinguishing SciELO from commercial open access publishers. Revenue is not generated from author fees.

Go-to-market motion1 record

Distribution channels7 records

Marketing channels6 records

Core offering

SciELO operates a decentralized open access publishing infrastructure network that hosts, indexes, and disseminates peer-reviewed scientific journals, academic books, research data, and preprints across 15+ national collections in Latin America, Spain, Portugal, and South Africa. The platform provides XML/JATS-based article processing, DOI assignment via Crossref, journal-level analytics, and multi-format delivery (HTML, PDF, EPUB) under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licensing. All content is free for readers and authors do not pay article processing charges, with operations funded by Brazilian research funding agencies.

Product overview

SciELO (Scientific Electronic Library Online) is a decentralized Open Access infrastructure network for scientific journal publishing and hosting. The portfolio consists of the core SciELO Portal platform for journal publishing, SciELO Books for academic monographs, SciELO Data for research data repositories, SciELO Preprints for pre-publication sharing, and the BrCris research information ecosystem. SciELO operates across 16 country-specific sites (Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Ecuador, Mexico, Paraguay, Peru, Portugal, South Africa, Spain, Uruguay, and Venezuela) plus 3 in development, covering subject areas including Health Sciences (583 journals), Human Sciences (578 journals), Linguistics/Letters/Arts (92 journals), and Psychoanalysis (7 journals). The network is supported by Crossref for citation linking and is funded by Brazilian research agencies FAPESP, CAPES, and CNPq.

Differentiator

Problem solved

Functional benefit

Brands

• SciELO Books: Platform for publishing academic books in open access format
• SciELO Preprints
• SciELO Data
• SciELO in Perspective

Products and services

• SciELO Portal Main open access publishing and hosting platform for peer-reviewed scientific journals across Latin America, Spain, Portugal, and South Africa; provides journal management, article publishing, indexing, DOI assignment, and metrics services.
• SciELO Books

Quantifiable outcome

• 16+ million scientific publications available through connected infrastructure (BrCris)
• +2 more outcomes

Named customers3 records

Segments3 records

Ideal customer profiles2 records

Technology focussed Yes

API detail

Has API

No

API docs

API detail

Core technology

AI maturity

App detail

AI capability6 records

Feature6 records

Partnerships

Three partnerships are on record, tiered core and minor.

• CrossrefcoreTechnology or Integration · 27 February 2026Crossref collaboration for DOI assignment, metadata standards, and citation linking. SciELO and Crossref partnered to co-host the Crossref Metadata Sprint in São Paulo (March 2026) to spotlight Brazilian open research community and improve metadata quality.
• BIREME/PAHO/WHOcoreStrategic or Co-development PartnerLatin American and Caribbean Center on Health Sciences Information, a specialized center of the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO)/World Health Organization (WHO). Provides technical cooperation and supports SciELO Saúde Pública (Public Health) collection.
• Virtual Health Library (BVS)minorStrategic or Co-development PartnerPartnership with Virtual Health Library network for health sciences information dissemination and interoperability with SciELO Saúde Pública collection.

Scale indicators6 records

Recent moves6 records

Expansion highlights5 records

Direct peers

• Redalyc: Redalyc is a Latin American open access scholarly journal platform based in Mexico, directly comparable to SciELO in geographic focus, non-commercial diamond OA model, and service of regional scientific journals across social sciences and humanities.
• arXiv: arXiv is a free preprint server operated by Cornell University, comparable to SciELO Preprints in providing free preprint infrastructure for scientific manuscripts outside commercial publishing channels.
• Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ): DOAJ is the global index of vetted open access journals, comparable to SciELO in serving as infrastructure for the open access scholarly publishing ecosystem and providing discoverability and quality signals for OA journals worldwide.
• OpenEdition: OpenEdition is a French non-profit open access publishing platform for humanities and social sciences, comparable to SciELO in providing diamond OA infrastructure for regional academic content with multilingual reach.
• Public Library of Science (PLOS): PLOS is a leading non-profit open access scientific publisher offering journals across multiple disciplines. It is directly comparable to SciELO in mission, diamond/free OA ethos where applicable, and target audience of academic researchers and institutions.

Broad incumbents

• JSTOR: JSTOR is a large digital library providing access to scholarly journals and books, comparable to SciELO in hosting scholarly content for academic research but operating as a paid subscription/archive platform rather than free diamond OA.
• Frontiers: Frontiers is a global open access publisher operating across hundreds of journals, comparable to SciELO in serving OA journal publishing demand but with a commercial APC-funded model and much broader geographic and disciplinary reach.
• MDPI: MDPI is a large commercial open access publisher with thousands of journals globally, comparable to SciELO in offering open access journal publishing at scale but operating on a paid APC model versus SciELO's diamond OA.
• BioMed Central (BMC, Springer Nature): BMC is a major open access publisher within Springer Nature, comparable to SciELO in publishing peer-reviewed open access journals across the life sciences and serving the same author base of academic researchers.

Regional players

• Latindex: Latindex is a regional cooperative information system for serials published in Latin America, the Caribbean, Spain, and Portugal, comparable to SciELO in supporting visibility and discoverability of regional scientific journals.

Market position

Strengths5 records

Weaknesses5 records

Competitive moat6 records

Key risks6 records

Key highlights6 records

Customer concentration

• YouTubeyoutube.com/user/RedeSciELO
• Facebookfacebook.com/SciELONetwork
• LinkedInlinkedin.com/company/scielo---scientific-electronic-library-online

Revenue estimate

Valuation estimate

Number of profiles

Funding overview

Funding rounds

Investors

Funding detail is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

M&A

Investments

M&A and investment is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

Frequently asked questions about Scientific Electronic Library Online