Open Access 2007 - 2017: Country and University Level Perspective

Each year the number of Open Access (OA) papers is gradually increasing. We carried out a study investigating 400 universities from 8 countries to examine: i) the total number of OA papers per country, ii) proportion of OA papers published by representative universities in each country classified into three tiers of research quality: high, middle and low, iii) how universities within the same country compare to each other and iv) the growth of OA papers in countries per year. We conclude that among the analysed countries the UK and USA rank first and second respectively, while Russia and India are positioned towards the bottom of the list. We observe no link between the proportion of OA papers published by authors at a university and the university ranking, with some universities in the middle university rank tier having a larger proportion of OA papers than those in the high tier