Over the past two years, the Information & Openness focal area has made progress in promoting openness in research information through many internal discussions and wider projects. Our efforts have focused on supporting openness-driven data usage and decision making in science management and evaluation, and recognizing the important role open research information plays in these processes. As we look back on what we accomplished last year, we remain dedicated to encouraging transparency, responsibility, and inclusiveness in the use of research information. We are excited in this blog post to review our progress toward reaching our goals within our agenda that we shared last year in a blogpost and reflect on where we are now.

Reflecting on our accomplishments

When the Information & Openness focal area was established, we set out with a mission to understand the complex landscape of (open) research information and to promote the responsible use of open scientometric data sources in research and evaluation practices. Over the past two years, we have laid the foundation for this work by focusing on three main pillars to structure our work: understanding, intervening, and practicing.

In our first two years within this focal area, work in the Understanding pillar focused on exploring the open research information landscape, tracking the availability of open data sources, and interrogating the factors influencing the spread and usage of open information practices.

In the Intervening pillar we aimed to promote and support the notion of open research information by taking concrete actions in and outside our centre.

In the Practicing pillar we emphasized implementing open research information practices within CWTS itself, ensuring that future research and service work are based on open data sources, in alignment with open science principles. As we relied on these pillars for support in reaching our goals and accomplishments, we continued to question and redefine the concepts behind our pillars in our biweekly meetings.

As announced in our blogpost last year, our agenda includes deepening our research into open research information, expanding our interventions aimed at promoting openness of research information to enhance transparency in research, evaluation and decision-making processes, further embedding openness of research information into the culture of CWTS, and collaborating with external partners to continue advancing the use of open research information globally. Here are some of the accomplishments from last year that we're proud of and truly passionate about:

Internal developments

We have worked on the conceptual development of our focal area by mapping, defining and redefining our core principles and way of working. Our focal area has attracted 27 colleagues, in addition to four coordinators.

We have invited a large number of guest speakers for discussions around their own projects related to open research information: Cameron Neylon from the Curtin Open Knowledge Initiative, Matt Buys from DataCite, Erik Schultes and Erik van Winkle from GO FAIR and DeSci Labs, Ginny Hendricks and Geoffrey Bilder from Crossref, Jessica Meijer from LURIS, Daniel Hook and Simon Porter from Digital Science, Rutger de Jong from the Leiden University library, Emmy Tsang from Invest in Open Infrastructure, Fabio Lorensi do Canto and Washington Luís Ribeiro de Carvalho Segundo from IBICT, Ronald Snijder from OAPEN, and Nick Shockey from SPARC. Whenever we had an external speaker, we invited all CWTS colleagues to join us in our focal area meetings so that they could all benefit from the discussions with our guests.

One last development to mention is our new focal area PhD candidate Tanya Lee, who specializes in the intersections of international political economy (IPE), (digital) technologies, and research capitalization. At CWTS she is specifically working on actor mapping of stakeholders resisting the open research information movement and its relations with platform capitalism.

Barcelona Declaration on Open Research Information

The focal area has played a leading role in a prominent policy initiative: The Barcelona Declaration on Open Research Information. The Barcelona Declaration, published in April 2024, advocates for openness of research information. It has been signed by over 100 research organizations globally. These organizations have made a commitment to making openness the default for the research information they use and produce. They have created a joint roadmap for realizing this commitment. Together with SIRIS Foundation and Crossref, CWTS has established the Barcelona Declaration Office to support the implementation of the Barcelona Declaration roadmap.

Open data sources

We have had many discussions about open sources of scientometric data, focusing on issues such as data coverage, data accuracy, ethics, governance, and sustainability. Through these discussions we have learned more and more about the developments in the open data sources landscape and the challenges these data sources are facing. We are actively transitioning CWTS to make the use of open data sources the norm for future scientometric analyses performed by our centre. We have focused on data sources such as Crossref, DataCite, ORCID, OpenAlex, OpenAIRE, OpenCitations, and ROR, among others. This shift aligns with the broader ambition of CWTS to fully integrate openness into our work.

Leiden Ranking Open Edition

A notable achievement of our focal area has been the transformation of the CWTS Leiden Ranking into a fully open and transparent information source, based on data from the OpenAlex database. The first release of the Leiden Ranking Open Edition took place on January 30, 2024, followed by a second release on October 9, 2024. This effort exemplifies our commitment to providing information based on data that can be freely accessed, used, and reused, thereby empowering users to make transparent evidence-informed decisions.

Projects

CWTS is exploring the use of open research information in a variety of projects. This for instance includes the European Higher Education Sector Observatory (EHESO) and the Chilean CINCEL project. We are also promoting openness of research information through our UNESCO Lab on Diversity and Inclusion in Global Science, where we are developing the idea of a so-called Multiversatory. At the national level in the Netherlands, we are involved in various initiatives aimed at strengthening infrastructures for open research information, working closely together with SURF and other key stakeholders in the Dutch research system.

CWTS course Scientometrics Using Open Data

This course, in collaboration with the Curtin Open Knowledge Initiative (COKI) and Sesame Open Science successfully ran its first edition in November 2023 and continued with two more editions in March and November 2024. This course aims to train researchers and professionals in the use of open scientometric data sources in research assessment and research policy contexts, reinforcing our mission to promote openness of research information as the norm.

What’s next

For the last two years, Zeynep Anli, Clara Calero-Medina, Nees Jan van Eck, and Ludo Waltman have served as coordinators of the Information & Openness focal area. As of March 2025, our new coordinators are Nees Jan van Eck, Kathleen Gregory, and Mark Neijssel. Are you interested in exploring collaboration opportunities? Don’t hesitate to reach out to one of them.

The coming years offer significant opportunities for further progress, and we look forward to continuing our work alongside colleagues, partners, and the broader research community. We expect to share more updates on our initiatives in the coming months. Thank you for your continued engagement in advancing openness of research information!