Understanding differences of the OA uptake within the German university landscape (2010-2020). Part 1: journal-based OA

TL;DR

This study analyzes the factors influencing Open Access adoption in German universities from 2010 to 2020, highlighting the dominant role of academic self-governance and the growing importance of transformative agreements.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive regression analysis framework to identify key determinants of OA uptake and incorporates qualitative insights from university OA officers.

Findings

Academic self-governance is the most significant factor for OA adoption.

Transformative agreements gained importance in 2020.

Infrastructure and services for OA are not significant determinants.

Abstract

This study investigates the determinants for the uptake of Full and Hybrid Open Access (OA) in the university landscape of Germany. It adapts the governance equaliser as a heuristic for this purpose and distinguishes between three factors: The disciplinary profile (academic self-governance), infrastructures and services of universities that aim to support OA (managerial self-governance) and large transformative agreements (part of state regulation). The uptake of OA, the influence of the disciplinary profile of universities and the influence of transformative agreements is measured by combining several data sources (incl. Web of Science, Unpaywall, an authority file of standardised German affiliation information, the ISSN-Gold-OA 4.0 list, and lists of publications covered by transformative agreements). For managerial self-governance, a structured data collection was created by harvesting different sources of information and by manual online search. To determine the explanatory power of the different factors, a series of regression analyses was performed for different periods and for both Full as well as Hybrid OA. As a result of the regression analyses, the most determining factor for the explanation of differences in the uptake of both OA-types turned out to be academic self-governance. For the year 2020, Hybrid OA transformative agreements have become a second relevant factor. However, all variables that reflect local infrastructural support and services for OA (managerial self-governance) turned out to be non-significant. To deepen the understanding of the adoption of OA on the level of institutions, the outcomes of the regression analyses are contextualised by an interview study conducted with 20 OA officers of German universities.