University journals in the global academic publishing landscape: Mapping over 19,000 diverse titles based on Ulrichsweb data - Scientometrics

Universities have been an instrumental part of the scholarly publishing landscape dating back several centuries, but comprehensive mapping of the presence of universities' involvement in publishing of journals is lacking. Using Ulrichsweb as the primary source and complementing it with data from Scopus, Web of Science, DOAJ and OpenAlex, we compiled a dataset of 19,414 active, peer-reviewed university journals from 148 countries using a multilingual identification method. The results reveal significant disparities in coverage: nearly three-quarters of the journals are indexed in OpenAlex, almost half in DOAJ, fewer than a quarter in Scopus, and fewer than a fifth on the Web of Science Core Collection. From a global perspective, university journals are heavily clustered to a few countries, notably the United States, Indonesia and Brazil. University journals are characterized by strong linguistic diversity, with more than a third publishing exclusively in non-English languages. The social sciences and humanities dominate the disciplinary profile. This study establishes a baseline for further research into bibliodiversity, equity and the role of universities in scholarly communication.

Opening books collectively: Working together for a fairer future for books | Septentrio Conference Series

Scholarly publishing’s hidden diversity: How exclusive databases sustain the oligopoly of academic publishers

Global scholarly publishing has been dominated by a small number of publishers for several decades. This paper revisits the data on corporate control of scholarly publishing by analyzing the relative shares of scholarly journals and articles published by the major publishers and the “long tail” of smaller, independent publishers, using Dimensions and Web of Science (WoS). The reduction of expenses for printing and distribution and the availability of open-source journal management tools may have contributed to the emergence of small publishers, while recently developed inclusive databases may allow for the study of these. Dimensions’ inclusive indexing revealed the number of scholarly journals and articles published by smaller publishers has been growing rapidly, especially since the onset of large-scale online publishing around 2000, resulting in a higher share of articles from smaller publishers. In parallel, WoS shows increasing concentration within a few corporate publishers. For the 1980–2021 period, we retrieved 32% more articles from Dimensions compared to the more selective WoS. Dimensions’ data showed the expansion of small publishers was most pronounced in the Social Sciences and the Arts and Humanities, but a similar trend is observed in the Natural Sciences and Engineering, and the Health Sciences. A major geographical divergence is also revealed, with English-speaking countries and/or those located in northwestern Europe relying heavily on major publishers for the dissemination of their research, while the rest of the world being relatively independent of the oligopoly. Finally, independent journals publish more often in open access in general, and in Diamond open access in particular. We conclude that enhanced indexing and visibility of recently created, independent journals may favour their growth and stimulate global scholarly bibliodiversity.

Variety Is the Spice of Life: Bibliodiversity, Scholarly Publishing and the Inexact Science of Making Ends Meet - De Gruyter Conversations

What does bibliodiversity mean for libraries and academia today? Last month, an international panel explored how diverse voices, open access and local publishing initiatives can transform scholarly communication and advance equity worldwide.

The time for action is now: Equity and sustainability for diamond publishing in Aotearoa New Zealand – InfoDoc MicroVeille

Evaluating Multilingual Metadata Quality in Crossref

Introduction: Scholarly research spans multiple languages, making multilingual metadata crucial for organizing and accessing knowledge across linguistic boundaries. These multilingual metadata already exist and are propagated throughout scholarly publishing infrastructure, but the extent to which they are correctly recorded, or how they affect metadata quality more broadly is little understood. Methods: Our study quantifies the prevalence of multilingual records across a sample of publisher metadata and offers an understanding of their completeness, quality, and alignment with metadata standards. Utilizing the Crossref API to generate a random sample of 519,665 journal article records, we categorize each record into four distinct language types: English monolingual, non-English monolingual, multilingual, and uncategorized. We then investigate the prevalence of programmatically-detectable errors and the prevalence of multilingual records within the sample to determine whether multilingualism influences the quality of article metadata. Results: We find that English-only records are still in the vast majority among metadata found in Crossref, but that, while non-English and multilingual records present unique challenges, they are not a source of significant metadata quality issues and, in few instances, are more complete or correct than English monolingual records. Discussion & Conclusion: Our findings contribute to discussions surrounding multilingualism in scholarly communication, serving as a resource for researchers, publishers, and information professionals seeking to enhance the global dissemination of knowledge and foster inclusivity in the academic landscape.

Journal Article: “Thema and World Needs: Exploring Bibliodiversity Through Open Access Book Subjects”

The article linked below was recently published by Insights. Title Thema and World Needs: Exploring Bibliodiversity Through Open Access Book Subjects Authors Ronald Snijder OAPEN Foundation Source Insights Volume 38 (2025) DOI: 10.1629/uksg.679 Abstract Bibliodiversity is mostly studied based on publication languages or the imbalance of the means of knowledge production and dissemination. This article […]

Thema and world needs: exploring bibliodiversity through open access book subjects | Insights

Insights: the UKSG journal (2048-7754) aims to support UKSG's mission to connect the information community and encourage the exchange of ideas on scholarly communication, specifically to:Provide a forum for the communication and exchange of ideas between the many stakeholders in the global knowledge community.Disseminate news, information and publications, and raise awareness of services that support the scholarly information sector.From 1988 to 2011, Insights was published as Serials: The Journal for the Serials Community. Serials has been fully digitised and is openly accessible at serials.uksg.org.