Skip to content
Nations Inquiry — home

Data for 2016

Academic Freedom Index, 2016

2016, as V-Dem Institute’s 2026 release gives it · stored as published, never rewritten

V-Dem's Academic Freedom Index asks how free scholars and universities are in practice: to research and teach, to share and publish findings, to govern their own institutions, to work without surveillance or intimidation on campus, and to express themselves academically and culturally. It runs from 0 to 1, and a higher figure means more freedom.

Academic Freedom Index, 2016 covers 176 countries. Austria is highest, at 0.972; North Korea is lowest, at 0.012. The middle country reads 0.727. Against 2015, 99 values changed (39 up, 60 down), the same countries are covered.

Download CSVCite this year
Share

Share this page

Academic Freedom Index · Data for 2016

HighestAustria

0.972

LowestNorth Korea

0.012

Shaded by value in five groups of equal size, darkest at the better end.

01Position · derived

The table

Every country and every column of Academic Freedom Index, 2016, as published. V-Dem Institute ranks nobody on this measure; the position is derived here by ordering the published values. “=” marks a shared position.

Showing 25 of 176 countries · select a heading to sort

Academic Freedom Index, 2016: every country, as published by V-Dem Institute, University of Gothenburg.
derived
1AustriaAUTWestern Europe0.972
2EstoniaESTNorthern Europe0.970
3PortugalPRTSouthern Europe0.968
=4LatviaLVANorthern Europe0.965
=4UruguayURYSouth America0.965
=6BelgiumBELWestern Europe0.964
=6ChileCHLSouth America0.964
8GermanyDEUWestern Europe0.962
=9ItalyITASouthern Europe0.954
=9LithuaniaLTUNorthern Europe0.954
11CyprusCYPWestern Asia0.953
12SwedenSWENorthern Europe0.951
13JamaicaJAMCaribbean0.949
=14DenmarkDNKNorthern Europe0.948
=14PolandPOLEastern Europe0.948
16SpainESPSouthern Europe0.947
17SlovakiaSVKEastern Europe0.946
=18FinlandFINNorthern Europe0.944
=18SloveniaSVNSouthern Europe0.944
=20CzechiaCZEEastern Europe0.939
=20IsraelISRWestern Asia0.939
22LuxembourgLUXWestern Europe0.938
23United KingdomGBRNorthern Europe0.931
=24MexicoMEXCentral America0.926
=24SwitzerlandCHEWestern Europe0.926

02In 2016

At either end

The 5 countries at each end of the headline.

Highest

  1. 1Austria0.972
  2. 2Estonia0.970
  3. 3Portugal0.968
  4. 4Latviashared0.965
  5. 4Uruguayshared0.965

Lowest

  1. 176North Korea0.012
  2. 175Eritrea0.020
  3. 174Turkmenistan0.022
  4. 173Syria0.037
  5. 172South Sudan0.050

A higher value is the better result. The middle country reads 0.727. “Shared” marks a value another country also holds.

032015 → 2016

Since 2015

What changed between 2015 and this one: who joined or left, and how far the headline moved.

  • +0 / −0countries joined / left
  • 99values changed, of 176 in both
  • 39 · 60rose · fell
  • 77unchanged

Rose most

Fell most

Both years come from the same release, so a difference here is a change in the data, not a revision of it. Every country’s full history is charted on the statistic page.

04Caveats

Read before you use

What this edition’s numbers are and are not, worked out from the file itself.

How values are stored

  • One year of the 2026 release

    Every year in this series comes from V-Dem Institute’s 2026 release, recalculated on one method. It can differ from what was first published for 2016.

  • 148 distinct values among 176

    Values are stored exactly as published, to 3 decimals. 3 countries share 0.912. Countries sharing a value share a position too.

  • The position is ours

    V-Dem Institute publishes values only; the order is this site’s.

  • Nothing missing

    Every one of the 176 countries has every column.

05The files

Download and cite

The table as a file, digit for digit, what this site changed, and a citation for this edition.

Licence in full

What this site changed: Reshaped into one row per country: regional and income-group totals are left out, only the columns listed are kept, each row gets its ISO 3166 code, and some country names are brought to one spelling. No value is recalculated, rescaled or rounded.

Licence: CC BY-SA 4.0 · what it allows, in plain words

Cite this edition

V-Dem Institute, University of Gothenburg (2016). Academic Freedom Index, 2016 [data set], describing 2016. As held by Nations Inquiry, https://nationsinquiry.com/datasets/academic-freedom/2016

0636 held

Other years