In all areas of analysis, analyses can be carried out using the filter functions [1]. Analysis results can be grouped according to various criteria [2] and downloaded or shared [3].

 1. Filters

Filters are linked with AND, while entries within a filter criterion are linked with OR. If a user changes to a different area, all filter settings are retained.

• Canton where the publishing institution is located. 

• Institution with which the publishing authors are affiliated. As soon as the “institution” filter is selected, a window will Open which allows you to search for and select the standardized spelling of an institution’s name. Multiple selection (e.g. university and associated university hospital) is possible. When multiple institutions are selected, the results are deduplicated.

• Publisher can be selected from a drop-down list, after you have entered a search term. The list includes all publishers to which publications are assigned in the OA monitor. The names of the publishers are standardized on an ongoing basis. Multiple selection by typing in another search term is possible.

• Publisher publication model: publishers are only differentiated between Gold and Closed or Hybrid OA. While publishers with the Gold publication model publish only Gold OA journals, publishers with the Closed/Hybrid model can publish Gold, Hybrid, and subscription-only journals.

• Journal titles can be selected from a drop-down menu, after you have entered a search term. Multiple selection by typing in another search term is possible.

• Journal publication model: we differentiate between Gold and Closed/Hybrid Open Access. The information was taken from the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) and Unpaywall.

• Publication OA model: Filter option according to the definitions of OA types (LINK TO >WIKI>JOURNAL MONITOR (OAM-CH)>OPEN ACCESS TYPES)

• Release date: Using this option, analysis results can be filtered according to the publication date of the publications.

 2. Grouping

All publication analyses can be grouped according to various criteria.

Via “grouping”, total numbers are always listed for the selected criterion, e.g.:

• Number of publications per institution  
• Number of publications per Open Access status/Closed access status
• Total expenditure on publications per cost type

  Analysis results are not sorted via “grouping”.

If you select NO GROUPING, an unsorted and ungrouped list of results will be displayed.

 2.1 Searching analysis results

Regardless of the grouping, all analysis results can be specifically searched for individual publications via DOIs or Dimensions IDs. Multiple DOIs or IDs can be entered in the search field separated by spaces.

 2.2 Charts

In addition to displaying the results in tables only, the OA monitor offers a variety of different charts to aid in visualizing the analyses. All analysis results can be output as bar charts, line charts, or pie charts, regardless of their grouping.

 3. Downloading and sharing analysis results  

Grouped and ungrouped analysis results can be downloaded as CSV files. The number of titles to be downloaded can be increased as desired up to a limit of 10’000 entries via the download assistant, which opens automatically after clicking on the download icon.

Furthermore, it is possible to share the selected filter settings and analysis results via a link. After clicking on the corresponding icon, a link is displayed which can be copied via the copy symbol and then forwarded, for example by email. All charts can be downloaded as PNG files. By moving the cursor over a chart, various function icons Open on the right-hand side of the screen. The camera icon allows you to download the selected chart as an image.

The Journal Monitor (OAM-CH) uses journal article data collected from OpenAlex (which uses digital object identifiers (DOI) as a standard), enrich the data with data from Crossref (ISSN), mapped (via ISSN) against the Directory of Open Access Journals DOAJ (OA Model assigned to journal) and a static list of journals, and further enrich the data using DOI by institution ID (ROR) and corresponding status from the OpenAlex database.  

• OpenAlex harvests Open Access content from publishers and repositories. In addition to articles, publication channels and licences are also recorded. This information is used in the monitor to calculate the OA proportions and to assign an OA model to each publication. Please see also OA typology. OpenAlex is also used as a source for publication references. All journal articles whose publication type is “article” are included in OA monitor analyses. The database contains information on the corresponding author.

• Unpaywall also harvests Open Access content from publishers and repositories. It is used as an additional source to determine the OA status of each publication.

• Crossref interlinks millions of items from a variety of content types, including journals. Linked content includes materials from Scientific, Technical and Medical (STM) and Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH) disciplines.

• Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) is a freely accessible, independent database, which indexes peer-reviewed Open-access journals covering all areas of science, technology, medicine, social sciences, arts, and humanities. For each journal, in addition to various metadata such as publisher or LCC subjects, the database also includes the first year of OA and the amount of any APCs incurred.  

• Research Organization Registry (ROR) is a freely accessible database that catalogues research institutions worldwide in a standardized format and provides them with persistent identifiers. It is a community-led project that includes other metadata such as relationships between organizations and other links. The names of cantons from ROR are standardized so that a uniform German, English or French spelling is used.

Merging the Source Data

 1. OpenAlex

In the first step, OpenAlex takes all publications that meet the following conditions:

• Publications filtered by document types:
  • We include “articles” (including “journal-article”, “proceedings-article” and “posted-content”), “letter”, “review”, “erratum”
  • We exclude “paratext”, “preprint”
• Publications filtered by primary_location.source.type:
  • We include “journal”, “conference”
  • We exclude “repository”, “ebook”, “platform”, “book series”, “metadata”, “other”

Information taken from the OpenAlex data set:

• DOI
• journal(ISSNs)
• publisher
• OA model
• publication date

In addition, the publisher is labelled as Open Access using a stored list.

The OA model from OpenAlex is compared to the OA model from Unpaywall. If there is a difference, the higher OA model is chosen (e.g. Green is higher than Closed, Gold is higher than Green).

 2. CrossRef list of titles

Next, the ISSNs provided by OpenAlex are looked up in the Crossref list of titles. All available ISSNs are considered and compared on an individual basis. If exactly one result is found, the respective journal is included.

After that, further information for the journal is added and mapping is carried out via ISSNs:

• DOAJ for the OA model assigned to the journal
• static lists of journals (mirror journals, OA publishers)

 3. OpenAlex

The following information is taken from OpenAlex:

• institutions involved and corresponding status

ROR is taken as the standard data set for the institutions (supported by OpenAlex).

The Open Access types are assigned exclusively. As soon as an Open Access category has been assigned, the checking procedure is cancelled. This means that the procedure does not allow for multiple classifications such as Green and Closed for the same document.

ROR institution names

The Journal Monitor (OAM-CH) harvests institution names directly from ROR, using the iso630 language labels English (“en”), French (“fr”) and German (“de”). To look up the ROR language labels of your institution you can use the link: https://api.ror.org/organizations/&”RORID (e.g. for University of St.Gallen https://api.ror.org/organizations/0561a3s31). If you need to change your institution name in either language (in accordance with your affiliation guideline), please submit a curation request directly to ROR. Updates in ROR usually take several months to take effect and be delivered from ROR to the Journal Monitor (OAM-CH).

ISSN corrections

Incorrect ISSN information in the CrossRef journal list is corrected.

OpenAlex publisher names

Different spellings of publishers’ names in the OpenAlex data set are standardized so that a uniform spelling is used in the OA monitor. This also applies to publishers and imprints that have been acquired by umbrella publishers.

Examples:

{
    "_id": <string>,
    "publisher": <Publisher>,
    "journal": <Journal>,
    "year": <int?>,
    "published_date": <string>,
    "oa_color": <int?>,
    "dim": <PublicationSourceData>
}

Publisher

{
    "_id": <string>,
    "name": <string>,
    "oa_color": <int?>
}

Journal

{
"_id": <string>,
    "title": <string>,
    "oa_color": <int?>,
    "issns": [ <string>, <...> ]
}

PublicationSourceData

{
    "source_id": <string>,
    "organisations": [ <Organisation>, <...> ],
    "url": <string>
}

Organisation

{
    "_id": <string>,
    "grid_id": <string>,
    "name": <string>,
    "aliases": [ <string>, <...> ],
    "acronyms": [ <string>, <...> ],
    "type": <string>,
    "address": <RorAddress>,
    "labels": <RorLabels>,
    "relationships": <RorRelationship>,
    "corresponding": <bool?>
}

 RorAddress

{
    "city": <string>,
    "state": <string>,
    "state_code": <string>,
    "country": <string>,
    "country_code": <string>,
    "lat": <double?>,
    "lng": <double?>,
    "primary": <bool>,
    "postcode": <string>,
}

RorLabel

{
    "label": <string>,
    "iso639": <string>
}

RorRelationship

{
    "type": <string>,
    "id": <string>
}

Data query

This end point is required for data query:

/data/{database}

So far only “public” can be used as database. The query is passed by query parameter. The following MongoDB-Commands are supported by the API:

• find
• aggregate
• count
• distinct
• getMore
• mapReduce
• listCollections

All API answers are formatted according to the answers of the MongoDB. The entities are described here. Possible collections for queries: 

• Publications
• Journals
• Publishers
• Organisations

The previous week’s data is stored in additional collections with the suffix _old, which are updated every Sunday. With this endpoint and without a query parameter a list of all collections can be obtained.

The Open Access types are encoded as numbers as shown in this table: OA typology.

Queries used for the charts on this website

The following data queries were used for the basic charts visible on the Journal Monitor (OAM-CH) webpage:

• National level, published between 2022-2026: https://oam.oamonitor.ch/api/data/public?query={“aggregate”: “Publications”,”cursor”: {“batchSize”: 1000},”allowDiskUse”: true,”pipeline”: [{“$match”: {“published_date.year”: {“$gte”: 2022,”$lte”: 2026}}},{“$group”: {“_id”: {“oa_type”: “$oa_color”,”year”: “$published_date.year”},”count”: {“$sum”: 1}}}]}

• By institution category, published between 2022-2026: https://oam.oamonitor.ch/api/data/public?query={“aggregate”: “Publications”,”cursor”: {“batchSize”: 1000},”allowDiskUse”: true,”pipeline”: [{“$match”: {“published_date.year”: {“$gte”: 2022,”$lte”: 2026}}},{“$unwind”: “$organisations”},{“$group”: {“_id”: {“type”: “$organisations.type”,”oa_type”: “$oa_color”,”year”: “$published_date.year”},”distinct”: {“$addToSet”: “$_id”}}},{“$project”: {“count”: {“$size”: “$distinct”}}}]}

• By institution, published between 2022-2026: https://oam.oamonitor.ch/api/data/public?query={“aggregate”: “Publications”,”cursor”: {“batchSize”: 10000},”allowDiskUse”: true,”pipeline”: [{“$match”: {“published_date.year”: {“$gte”: 2022,”$lte”: 2026}}},{“$unwind”: “$organisations”},{“$group”: {“_id”: {“organisation”: “$organisations.name”,”organisation_type”: “$organisations.type”,”oa_type”: “$oa_color”,”year”: “$published_date.year”},”count”: {“$sum”: 1}}}]}

Examples for other queries

• All Green-OA publications from 2023: https://oam.oamonitor.ch/api/data/public?query={“find”: “Publications”,”filter”: {“published_date.year”: 2023,”oa_color”: 2}}
• Publication count per OA typology 2024: https://oam.oamonitor.ch/api/data/public?query={“aggregate”: “Publications”,”cursor”: {},”pipeline”: [{“$match”: {“published_date.year”: 2024}},{“$group”: {“_id”: “$oa_color”,”count”: {“$sum”: 1}}}]}
• All Gold-OA publications from 2025: https://oam.oamonitor.ch/api/data/public?query={“find”: “Publications”,”filter”: {“published_date.year”: 2025,”oa_color”: 7}}

Swagger

Forschungszentrum Jülich offers Swagger, because all endpoints can be seen and tried there.

Terms of use

Forschungszentrum Jülich has a fair use policy for the API. Although there are no fixed quotas, they reserve the right to take appropriate measures should they notice above-average utilization. If you are planning very large queries, please consult oamonitor@consortium.ch in advance.