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Entities & Insights

Terminology & Construction

Discover how OpenAIRE MONITOR tracks research outputs, connects projects, and provides insights into impact and openness through advanced metrics and curated data.

Entities

Research Products There are four different types of research products in the OpenAIRE Graph:
  • Publications
  • Research data
  • Research software
  • Other research products.

We deduplicate (merge) different records of research products and keep the metadata of all instances. 
Publication Research products intended for human reading (published articles, pre-prints, conference papers, presentations, technical reports, etc.)
Research data The sources from which the description of the research data has been collected reflect and support their own granularity, we do not define it.
Research software Source code or software package developed and/or used in a research context
Other research product Anything that does not fall into the previous categories (e.g. workflow, methods, protocols)
Projects Projects refer to project identifiers/grant IDs used by funders.
Unidentified project For some funders, we have agreed to include research outputs that cannot be linked to a specific project. In some cases, authors might acknowledge funding by a funder but do not provide additional information regarding the project number. Currently, such mined links are associated in the research graph with a project entity we name "unidentified" project. Some indicators are affected by this, such as the 'number of projects granted' that will appear increased by one (+1) compared to the actual number of project identifiers provided by the funder. However, this solution helps provide more accurate numbers for the research output of funders for which this applies, and for which otherwise these funded outputs would have been missed. In the extreme case, a couple of funders have not provided any grantIDs, as authors rarely acknowledge them (e.g., the Canadian funders in OpenAIRE). In those cases, Project indicators have been disabled as only one project will show.

Inherited and Inferred Attributes

We either inherit the attributes of entities via entries in the harvested metadata records or automatically generate them using our inference system (text and data mining algorithms).
Organisation

For research products, this refers to the affiliated organizations of its authors

For projects: the organizations participating in the project (i.e. beneficiaries of the grant)

We are improving the organization database with the use of our OpenOrgs tool. It allows curators to disambiguate organizations (merge different names of the same organization) and identify parent-child relationships (schools, departments, etc.).
Country

The country of the organisation.

Country code mapping: https://api.openaire.eu/vocabularies/dnet:countrieshttps://api.openaire.eu/vocabularies/dnet:countries
Funder

Funders that have joined OpenAIRE, i.e. their project data have gone through a validation process.

You can visit https://explore.openaire.eu/search/find if you would like to explore the research products and projects of all funders in OpenAIRE (the list of funders can be seen under the "Funder" Filter shown on the left side of the page).

For funder who want to join OpenAIRE: https://www.openaire.eu/funders-how-to-join-guide
Type

The sub-type of a research outcome (e.g., a publication can be a pre-print, conference proceeding, article, etc.)

Resource type mapping: https://api.openaire.eu/vocabularies/dnet:result_typologies (click on the code to see the specific types for each result type)
Other research product Anything that does not fall into the previous categories (e.g. workflow, methods, protocols)
Access rights

The best available (across all instances) access rights of a research product

Types (by best available):

Open: Open Access

Embargo: Closed for a specific period of time, then open.

Restricted: Definition of restricted may vary by data source, it may refer to access rights being given to registered users, potentially behind a paywall.

Closed: Closed access
Article Processing Charges (APC) The fee charged by publishers in order to publish a research publication in an open access journal. These charges are meant to cover the costs of publication and ensure the work is freely accessible to all. The APC information is sourced from OpenAPC, which is fully integrated into the OpenAIRE Graph. For a comprehensive guide: https://www.openaire.eu/openapc-guide.
APCs Reported by Your Institution

These are Article Processing Charges that your own institution has reported to OpenAPC. In most cases, the institution that reports the APC is the one that managed and likely paid the fee, although we do not know if they covered it entirely. Therefore, these entries usually reflect direct financial involvement and administrative responsibility by your institution.

Why Monitor Separately​​​​​​​: Knowing which APCs your institution likely funded offers valuable insights into the scale and distribution of your open-access investments. This information supports more accurate budget planning, helps justify funding decisions, and strengthens internal transparency and accountability.
APCs Reported by a Co-Author’s Institution

These are Article Processing Charges submitted to OpenAPC by another institution involved in the same publication, typically a co-author’s organization. Since the reporting party usually pays the fee, these entries suggest that external partners have taken on some or all of the publication costs, although the exact financial responsibility remains uncertain.

Why Monitor Separately: By distinguishing these APCs, you gain a clearer view of how publishing expenses are shared within your research network. This understanding can highlight cost-sharing patterns, inform fair collaboration agreements, and guide strategic decisions about forming or maintaining partnerships that support open-access publishing.
CC license

A Creative Commons copyright license (https://creativecommons.org/)
PID (persistent identifier)

A long-lasting reference to a resource

Types: http://api.openaire.eu/vocabularies/dnet:pid_typeshttp://api.openaire.eu/vocabularies/dnet:pid_types
Context

Related research community, initiative or infrastructure.
Journal

The scholarly journal an article is published in.
Publisher

The publisher of the venue (journal, book, etc.) of a research product.
Data sources (content providers)

The different data sources ingested in the OpenAIRE Graph.

  • Data Source Types:
  • Repositories
  • Open Access Publishers & Journals
  • Aggregators
  • Entity Registries
  • Journal Aggregators
  • CRIS (Current Research Information System)
Repositories Information systems where scientists upload the bibliographic metadata and payloads of their research products (e.g. PDFs of their scholarly articles, CSVs of their data, archive with their software), due to obligations from their organizations, their funders, or due to community practices (e.g. ArXiv, Europe PMC, Zenodo).
Open Access Publishers & Journals

Information systems of open access publishers or relative journals, which offer bibliographic metadata and PDFs of their published articles.
Aggregators

Information systems that collect descriptive metadata about research products from multiple sources in order to enable cross-data source discovery of given research products (e,g, DataCite, BASE, DOAJ).

Entity Registries

Information systems created with the intent of maintaining authoritative registries of given entities in the scholarly communication, such as OpenDOAR for the institutional repositories, re3data for the data repositories, CORDA and other funder databases for projects and funding information.
CRIS (Current Research Information System) Information systems adopted by research and academic organizations to keep track of their research administration records and relative results; examples of CRIS content are articles or research data funded by projects, their principal investigators, facilities acquired thanks to funding, etc.
Fields of Science (FoS) - beta This inferred attribute refers to the utilization of a Fields of Science taxonomy to categorize research publications within the OpenAIRE Graph. The algorithm classifies research across various levels of detail, from broad categories at Level 1 to more nuanced classifications at Level 3. For more: https://explore.openaire.eu/fields-of-science#01%20natural%20sciences.
Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) - beta This inferred attribute, determined through our own classification system, associates research publications in the OpenAIRE Graph with specific UN Sustainable Development Goals. By doing so, it emphasizes how individual research works align with and address global challenges such as climate change, biodiversity loss, pollution, and poverty reduction. For more information: https://www.openaire.eu/openaire-explore-introducing-sdgs-and-fos

Constructed Attributes

All attributes are constructed using our methodology, detailed below.
Attribute Definition How we build it
Journal Business Models    
Fully Open Access (OA)

A journal that publishes only in open access.

We follow Unpaywall’s approach on defining fully Open Access journals and publishers and we construct the lists of the latter using Unpaywall data.

In brief, a journal is fully Open Access if one or more of the following occur:

  1. It is in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ)
  2. It has a known fully OA Publisher (curated list).
  3. It only publishes OA articles.
Subscription

A journal that charges for access to its articles.

 Journals without any open access articles.
Hybrid

A subscription journal where some of its articles are open access.

 Journals with open access articles that are not fully OA journals.
Transformative Journal

"A Transformative Journal is a subscription/hybrid journal that is actively committed to transitioning to a fully Open Access journal.

In addition, a Transformative Journal must:

  • gradually increase the share of Open Access content; and
  • offset subscription income from payments for publishing services (to avoid double payments)."

Source: Plan S initiative

 We identify Transformative Journals by ISSN matching with the publicly available Transformative Journals data from Plan S initiative.
Under transformative agreements

Transformative agreements are those contracts negotiated between institutions (libraries, national and regional consortia) and publishers that transform the business model underlying scholarly journal publishing, moving from one based on toll access (subscription) to one in which publishers are remunerated a fair price for their open access publishing services.

Source: Plan S initiative

 

 We identify and retrieve from OpenAPC the set of articles with metadata published under transformative agreements .
Journal APC Business Models    
Diamond OA

A fully OA journal that does not charge article processing charges (APCs).

In other words, fully OA journals are either diamond, or charge APCs.

 We obtain APC data from DOAJ using DOAJ’s Public Data Dump (an exportable version of the journal metadata). We used it to determine whether a particular fully OA journal charges APCs.
Routes to Open Access (OA)    
Green OA

An open access scholarly publication deposited in a repository

 As in definition.
Gold OA

A scholarly publication published in a fully OA journal.

 We define fully OA journals above.
Hybrid OA

An open access scholarly publication published in a hybrid journal with an open license.

 We define hybrid journals above.

At this point we consider only CC licenses “open”. We are currently working on cleaning non-CC licenses as well to identify other open ones.

In principle, this means that we may be underestimating the number of hybrid OA articles and overestimating the number of bronze.
Bronze OA

An open access scholarly publication published in a hybrid journal without an open license.

  
Composite Scores    
Openness Score A measure representing the proportion of an organization's research that is available in Open Access. We calculate this metric by taking the average share of an organization’s research output that is in Open Access. This score is determined based on the best available access rights for any given output in the OpenAIRE Graph after undergoing the Graph Production Workflow including merging, enrichment and cleaning steps. For example, if a publication is published under closed access but can also be found in open access in a repository, it will be categorized as open access for the purposes of this score.
Findability Score

A metric indicating the proportion of an organization's research output identifiable by a Persistent Identifier (PID).

 We calculate this metric by taking the average share of an organization's research output with a Persistent Identifier (PID) in its metadata record within the OpenAIRE Graph, after it undergoing the Graph Production Workflow, comprising of merging, enrichment, and cleaning steps. For more detailed criteria on PIDs within the OpenAIRE Graph, refer to OpenAIRE's PID and Identifiers documentation.
FAIRness Score

A metric demonstrating the presence of critical metadata elements in an organization's research output, including the Title, Publisher, Abstract, Year of Publication, Author(s), and a Persistent Identifier (PID). It signifies the presence of metadata not its quality, with the exception of PIDs which have specific inclusion criteria.

 We calculate this metric by taking the average share of an organization's research output with essential metadata criteria; specifically the presence of a Title, Publisher, Abstract, Year of Publication, Author(s), and a Persistent Identifier (PID). While the score indicates the presence of these metadata elements, it does not assess their quality, with the exception of PIDs that have unique inclusion criteria in the OpenAIRE Graph, as detailed in OpenAIRE's PID and Identifiers documentation. The score represents the state of the organization’s research output metadata records in the OpenAIRE Graph after undergoing the Graph Production Workflow, encompassing merging, enrichment, and cleaning procedures. Please see OpenAIRE's Graph Production Workflow.
Miscellaneous    
Peer Reviewed Publication A peer reviewed publication is a scholarly article that has been evaluated and critiqued by independent experts in the same field before being published. This method is widely used by academic journals to enhance the credibility and reliability of published research.

A publication is peer-reviewed if either of the following criteria is true.

  1. Curated Peer-Review Assessment: The OpenAIRE team has engaged in a curation process to determine peer-review status. This hand-curated assessment has been integrated into the Graph and is continuously under development.
  2. Exclusion of Grey Literature: We filter out grey literature, which includes document types that typically bypass the peer review process, such as reports, and white papers. Given that the OpenAIRE Graph aggregates data from various sources, resulting in merged records, we specifically exclude entries where all instances are identified as grey literature.
    &
    Presence of DOI from Crossref: Since Crossref predominantly catalogues peer-reviewed content, its DOIs help maintain the scholarly credibility of our included publications.
Downloads

The number of downloads of a publication’s full text in a specific time frame, from a given set of data sources.

 We utilize the usage data for the downloads from OpenAIRE’s Usage Counts service that harvests it from a set of datasources. The time range of available downloads varies for each datasource.
Citations

The number of citations received by a publication. A citation is a reference to the source of information used in a publication.

 We utilize the number of citations of a publication from from the calculated impact indicators, provided by BIP!. Precisely, we use the Citation Count (CC) impact indicator, which sums all citations received by each article. More information: https://graph.openaire.eu/docs/graph-production-workflow/indicators-ingestion/impact-indicators/
Interdisciplinarity Interdisciplinarity refers to research that integrates knowledge, methods, or perspectives from multiple distinct fields of science. For this indicator, a publication is considered interdisciplinary if it is classified under more than one FoS level 3 category (indicator = 1).

We apply a hierarchical Fields of Science (FoS) classification, assigning each publication to one or more FoS level 3 fields. If more than one level 3 field is assigned, the publication is marked as interdisciplinary. More information: https://explore.openaire.eu/fields-of-science

Breakdown by Fields of Science (FoS):
Several indicators are also shown broken down by FoS level 1 or FoS level 2 using our FoS classification system, providing broader insights into major disciplines and subfields.

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