Developing indicators on Open Access by combining evidence from diverse data sources

Authors: van Leeuwen, T., Meijer, I., Yegros-Yegros, A., & Costas, R.

Summary: A method for populating OA labels for publications on Web of Science (WoS) Database (2009-2014) using multiple sources (DOAJ, ROAD, PMC, CrossRef & OpenAIRE) is described. Choices of sources follow the sustainability and legality principles. Only 1 out of 3 validation processes is explained (which is manual checking of a sample of publications). Results show that no single source/approach provides enough OA coverage and multiple sources have to be used. A summary of OA status by EU countries (linked through CWTS in-house WoS database)  is also given. The method in this article is similar to the one used by Unpaywall. A full paper is forthcomings.

Abstract: In the last couple of years, the role of Open Access (OA) publishing has become central in science management and research policy. In the UK and the Netherlands, national OA mandates require the scientific community to seriously consider publishing research outputs in OA forms. At the same time, other elements of Open Science are becoming also part of the debate, thus including not only publishing research outputs but also other related aspects of the chain of scientific knowledge production such as open peer review and open data. From a research management point of view, it is important to keep track of the progress made in the OA publishing debate. Until now, this has been quite problematic, given the fact that OA as a topic is hard to grasp by bibliometric methods, as most databases supporting bibliometric data lack exhaustive and accurate open access labelling of scientific publications. In this study, we present a methodology that systematically creates OA labels for large sets of publications processed in the Web of Science database. The methodology is based on the combination of diverse data sources that provide evidence of publications being OA.

van Leeuwen, T., Meijer, I., Yegros-Yegros, A., & Costas, R. (2017). Developing indicators on Open Access by combining evidence from diverse data sources. In STI 2017. Open indicators: innovation, participation and actor-based STI Indicators.

Source: Developing indicators on Open Access by combining evidence from diverse data sources