Analysis of the international journal publishing activities for Swiss academic institutions with special emphasis on gold open access publishing

The following study was commissioned by the Consortium of Swiss Academic Libraries (CSAL) and was executed by the Max Planck Digital Library (MPDL). The analysis focuses on the international journal publishing activities in Switzerland with special emphasis on gold open access publishing. The main data source describing the publishing activity in Switzerland was Scopus, an abstract and citation database for peer reviewed scientific articles provided by Elsevier. The raw data provided were processed, cleaned and enriched from the Directory of Open Access Databases (DOAJ) and MPDL in-house databases to derive a data warehouse appropriate for the intended analytics. Additional to the analysis for Switzerland in total, 31 institutions selected by the contractor were prepared for a separate analysis. The idea was to build up a selection that would be representative for the Swiss academic institutions. Thus, six Federal Institutes in Switzerland were selected, as well as the ten biggest Universities of Higher Education, seven Universities of Applied Sciences, seven Education Colleges and one National Library:

• École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne
• Eidgenössische Anstalt für Wasserversorgung, Abwasserreinigung und Gewässerschutz
• Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology
• Eidgenössische Forschungsanstalt für Wald, Schnee und Landschaft
• Paul Scherrer Institut
• Universität Zürich + Hospitals
• Université de Lausanne + Hospitals
• Universität Basel + Hospitals
• Universität Bern + Hospitals
• Université de Genève + Hospitals
• Universität St. Gallen
• Université de Fribourg
• Université de Neuchâtel
• Università della Svizzera italiana
• Universität Luzern
• Haute école spécialisée bernoise
• Fachhochschule Nordwestschweiz
• Fachhochschule Ostschweiz
• Haute école spécialisée de Suisse occidentale
• Hochschule Luzern
• Scuola universitaria professionale della Svizzera italiana
• Zürcher Fachhochschule
• Haute école pédagogique des cantons de Berne, du Jura et de Neuchâtel
• Haute école pédagogique du Valais
• Interkantonale Hochschule für Heilpädagogik Zürich (HfH)
• Haute école pédagogique de Fribourg
• Pädagogische Hochschule Thurgau
• Pädagogische Hochschule des Kantons St. Gallen
• Alta scuola pedagogica dei Grigioni
• Bibliothèque nationale suisse

For this selection, MPDL conducted an individual unification of Scopus affiliation strings. Publication data were analysed with respect to the number of articles published and aggregated at the levels of the publishing journal and the publisher for Switzerland in total and the 31 selected institutions. Gold open access publishers and journals were compared to subscription journals at all aggregation levels. For the estimation of open access costs, the share of articles with a reprint affiliation from Switzerland or selected institutions was calculated. Open access numbers from Germany, Great Britain, the United States and Austria as well as from worldwide publishing are presented for comparison.