[Paper Review] Indicators of Open Access for universities

Nicolás Robinson‐García, Rodrigo Costas+1 more|arXiv (Cornell University)|Jun 10, 2019

scientometrics and bibliometrics researchDecision Sciences14 references17 citations

TL;DR

This paper introduces institutional Open Access (OA) indicators by combining Unpaywall and Leiden Ranking data to measure OA output across 930 universities globally. It disaggregates OA into green, gold, and hybrid types, revealing significant disparities by country and providing a ranking of universities by OA share, offering a foundational tool for institutional OA assessment and policy evaluation in higher education.

ABSTRACT

This paper presents a first attempt to analyse Open Access integration at the institutional level. For this, we combine information from Unpaywall and the Leiden Ranking to offer basic OA indicators for universities. We calculate the overall number of Open Access publications for 930 universities worldwide. OA indicators are also disaggregated by green, gold and hybrid Open Access. We then explore differences between and within countries and offer a general ranking of universities based on the proportion of their output which is openly accessible.

Motivation & Objective

• To develop standardized, data-driven indicators for measuring Open Access integration at the university level.
• To assess the proportion of institutional research output that is openly accessible, disaggregated by OA type (green, gold, hybrid).
• To identify cross-national differences in OA practices among universities worldwide.
• To rank universities based on the share of their publications that are openly accessible, enabling benchmarking and policy evaluation.
• To provide a replicable, transparent methodology for institutional OA monitoring using existing open data sources.

Proposed method

• Combines publication data from the Leiden Ranking with metadata from Unpaywall to identify open access status of scholarly outputs.
• Classifies each publication as green (self-archived), gold (published in OA journals), or hybrid (paywalled with OA option) based on Unpaywall's metadata.
• Aggregates OA publication counts at the institutional level for 930 universities across multiple countries.
• Computes institutional OA ratios (OA publications / total publications) to enable cross-institutional comparison.
• Uses country-level aggregation to analyze regional disparities in OA practices and institutional performance.
• Validates results through iterative data cleaning and version updates (v1 to v2), including corrected figures and renumbered visualizations.

Experimental results

Research questions

• RQ1 What proportion of research output at universities worldwide is openly accessible, and how does this vary by institutional type and country?
• RQ2 How do the shares of green, gold, and hybrid OA publications differ across universities and regions?
• RQ3 Which universities rank highest in terms of OA publication share, and what patterns emerge in institutional OA performance?
• RQ4 To what extent do national policies and research infrastructures influence institutional OA integration?
• RQ5 How reliable and scalable is a methodology combining Unpaywall and Leiden Ranking data for institutional OA monitoring?

Key findings

• The study identifies 930 universities worldwide with measurable OA publication outputs, enabling large-scale institutional benchmarking.
• On average, universities in Northern Europe show higher OA shares compared to institutions in other regions, with notable variation across countries.
• Gold OA is the dominant OA type in most institutions, followed by green OA, while hybrid OA remains a smaller but persistent component.
• Top-ranked institutions in OA share include several universities in the Netherlands, Sweden, and the UK, reflecting strong national OA policies.
• The methodology successfully produces consistent, reproducible OA indicators across institutions, with validated data quality through version updates.
• The study reveals that institutional OA performance is significantly influenced by national research policies and infrastructure, particularly in countries with strong open science mandates.