• Overview of data sources: participating institutions.

• Absolute figures available for download: see Repository Monitor.

• Underlying datasets available for download: Please follow this link.

Methodology

The Consortium conducts an annual survey which requests repository data from swissuniversities members of the previous four publication years. The collected data needs regular updates to reflect changes in the OA status in form of an annual rolling survey which collects updated data from the previous four years. Data older than four years remain static; data and their visualizations are updated after each survey and made available on oamonitor.ch.

Transparency and reproducibility of the survey fully depend on the institutions’ provision of absolute figures (and underlying datasets) and on the repositories being compliant with metadata standards. Additional independent compliance checks (e.g. using the OpenAIRE Validator) or any other method of cross-checking or data validation are not within the scope of this survey.

The low-threshold manual approach of this survey excludes automated data aggregation/merging/de-duplication solutions, like harvesting OpenAIRE data. Visualizations of the data available on oamonitor.ch are based on the absolute figures aggregated in one list. 

Absolute figures: for the interpretation and visualisation of the delivered data on institutional and national level, the project uses the absolute figures as delivered by the institutions. The survey collects absolute figures of Open Access shares: “basic” (“Open”/ “Closed”) or/and if available “advanced” (“Green”/ “Gold”/ “Hybrid”/ “Closed”) per institution, resource type and year. The request form includes the following metadata: Institution name, ROR-ID, Institution type, Period, Resource type, OA type – basic, OA type – advanced, Number of items.

Underlying data: institutions are invited to deliver the underlying metadata on item level they used for identifying the Open Access shares per resource type and year which include the following standard metadata as described in the OpenAire Guidelines for institutional and thematic Repository Managers. Institutions are invited to add metadata fields they deem necessary to identify and allocate the resource types to their OA status and/or differentiate between journal article and professional article (if available).

• Journal article: An article, typically the realization of a research paper reporting original research findings, published in a journal issue. Expanding the COAR 3.0 definition by a project-specific definition of “professional article”, peer-reviewed or editorial-reviewed professional article published in magazine or journal can be included optionally in this category. Not part of this resource type: editorial, letter to the editor, book review, commentary, peer review, working paper.

• Book: A non-serial publication that is complete in one volume or a designated finite number of volumes. Not part of this resource type: Thesis, manuscript. Authorship or editorship to be counted.

• Book part: A defined chapter or section of a book, usually with a separate title or number.

• Conference paper: A paper, typically the realization of a research paper reporting original research findings, published in a proceeding or journal. Not part of this resource type: conference poster in proceeding, conference poster not in proceedings, conference presentation.

• Open: subsuming all OA content but not differentiating between specific Open Access categories
• Closed: all non-OA content plus Bronze

The simplified “advanced” OA types (Green, Gold, Hybrid) are sufficient to evaluate the general trend towards Open Access at national level. The simplifications include:

• Platinum is categorized as Gold. 
• Green subtypes like “published version” or “accepted version” which are referring to the full-text version of the document available in the repository are mapped to Green. 

The strict interpretation of other “Open” categories means that this monitor includes content in the Closed category which might be potentially Open Access:

• Green submitted: submitted only full-texts are not considered as published content. 
• Bronze: content is free to read only on the publisher page, lacks a clearly identifiable license and is typically not available for reuse.
• Full-text not available in the repository (some repositories did only count fulltexts as OA which are also available in their repository)
• Unclear CC licence status of content

The introduction of a category named “Other” for interpretation on national level was considered to identify OA potential but will not be implemented.