In the World of Citations, Are We Really Open(Minded), or Stuck in a Comfort Zone?

The study analyzes the geographic and disciplinary citation networks of six Italian universities (UNIBO, UNIMI, UNITO, UNIPD, UPO, and SNS) using data from OpenCitations, an open scholarly infrastructure. It evaluates whether these institutions possess distinct research profiles and determines if their citation flows reflect global engagement or are constrained by institutional, geographic, and disciplinary biases.

Utilizing a reproducible, open-data pipeline, publication records were enriched via persistent iden- tifiers. To map geographic flows, records were matched using the OpenAIRE Graph and the Research Organization Registry (ROR). For disciplinary flows, venue metadata from OpenCitations Meta, SCImago Journal Rank (SJR), and the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) was integrated and standardized using the top-level Library of Congress Classification (LCC).

Geographic mapping reveals a heavy reliance on Western hubs (Western Europe and Northern America), with a stark citation asymmetry regarding China, which acts as a heavy knowledge consumer of Italian research without reciprocal citation. Disciplinary flows are dominated by Science (32.6%) and Medicine (30.7%), which exhibit high self-citation rates. Conversely, mid-range fields like Geography and Social Sciences display high cross-disciplinary activity ( 80%). Large generalist universities (UNIBO, UNIMI) maintain vast global networks, while smaller specialized institutions exhibit distinct structures.

This project validates open scholarly infrastructures as transparent, viable alternatives to proprietary databases for mapping complex scientific interactions. Beyond validating the use of open bibliographic data, the study identifies promising directions for future development. In particular, integrating geographic and disciplinary dimensions could enable more fine-grained analyses of institutional profiles and collaboration patterns, further strengthening the analytical potential of open scholarly infrastructures.