Open Access uptake by universities worldwide

Nicolas Robinson-Garcia; Rodrigo Costas; Thed N van Leeuwen

doi:10.7717/peerj.9410

Open Access uptake by universities worldwide

PeerJ. 2020 Jul 8:8:e9410. doi: 10.7717/peerj.9410. eCollection 2020.

Authors

Nicolas Robinson-Garcia¹, Rodrigo Costas^{2

3}, Thed N van Leeuwen²

Affiliations

¹ Delft Institute of Applied Mathematics, Delft University of Technology, Delft, Netherlands.
² Centre for Science and Technology Studies, Leiden University, Leiden, Netherlands.
³ Centre for Research on Evaluation, Science and Technology, University of Stellenbosch, Stellenbosch, South Africa.

Abstract

The implementation of policies promoting the adoption of an open science (OS) culture must be accompanied by indicators that allow monitoring the uptake of such policies and their potential effects on research publishing and sharing practices. This study presents indicators of open access (OA) at the institutional level for universities worldwide. By combining data from Web of Science, Unpaywall and the Leiden Ranking disambiguation of institutions, we track OA coverage of universities' output for 963 institutions. This paper presents the methodological challenges, conceptual discrepancies and limitations and discusses further steps needed to move forward the discussion on fostering OA and OS practices and policies.

Keywords: Open access; Open science; Research assessment; Research policy; Science of science; Scientometrics; Universities; Unpaywall.

Grants and funding

Nicolas Robinson-Garcia has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement No 707404. Rodrigo Costas was funded by the South African DST-NRF Centre of Excellence in Scientometrics and Science, Technology and Innovation Policy (SciSTIP). There was no additional external funding received for this study. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.