Assessing open access publishing activities to inform open publishing services at a large R1 institution

Presenter Information

Wenli Gao, University of HoustonFollow
Xiao Zeng, University of HoustonFollow

Presentation Type

Lightning Talk

Location

Teams.

Start Date

8-4-2025 2:40 PM

End Date

8-4-2025 3:00 PM

Description

The University of Houston (UH) is a large, urban university classified as having "very high research activity" (formerly R1) under the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education. This study examines UH’s publishing activities over the past five years, with a particular focus on open access (OA) publishing. This study explores UH authors ' publication behaviors using data from OpenAlex, an open-source bibliographic catalog of scientific papers. This includes identifying where UH authors publish open access, the percentage of publications released under an OA model, differences in citations between OA and non-OA articles, subject areas where OA articles are concentrated, Article Processing Charges (APCs) incurred for OA publishing, and more.

The findings will guide the development of targeted open access awareness campaigns, support a campus-wide OA initiative that leverages the institutional repository, and inform strategic allocation of funds for OA publishing. This research is designed to improve the Libraries’ open publishing services and contribute to the broader field of scholarly communication by providing a replicable model for similar studies at other institutions.

Author Bios

Wenli Gao is the Head of Collections Strategies & Services at University of Houston where she provides vision, leadership and strategy for collections management. Her research interests span collection assessment, open access publishing, and leadership development. Wenli has authored numerous articles and book chapters and presented at various professional conferences, including those organized by the International Federation of Library Associations (IFLA), the American Library Association (ALA), and the Association of College & Research Libraries (ACRL), among others.

Xiao Zeng is the Open Publishing Librarian at the University of Houston, where she oversees the UH Institutional Repository and supports open access publishing initiatives. Her research focuses on leveraging library tools and current open publishing trends to improve research services and information access. Xiao is dedicated to adopting a user-centered approach, working to identify and address gaps in library services to better support the academic community and foster broader access to scholarly resources.

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 License