Open access agreements
Publications by VIVA corresponding authors with publishers with which VIVA has, or previously had, an open access agreement. Note that most agreements do not cover all journals from a publisher; see VIVA's OA agreements pages (opens in new tab) for what each agreement covers. The filters at the top select the data (source type defaults to journal on this tab); the legend on each chart controls what that chart displays, so use the chart legend to hide or show OA categories. Learn more in About.
Select Publisher Agreement
Publishing by OA Category Over Time
Stacked bars show all works with this publisher by OA category (closed at the bottom); the full bar equals total output. The chart always shows every category so the composition is visible. Tip: click a legend entry to hide or show that category; double-click it to show that category alone.
Current OA Status Breakdown
Top Subfields (OA Publishing)
VIVA publications
All scholarly outputs by VIVA member institutions, regardless of publisher agreement. The filters at the top select the data (this tab defaults to all source types and all OA statuses); the legend on each chart controls what that chart displays. Learn more in About.
Publishing by OA Category Over Time
Stacked bars show all VIVA works by OA category (closed at the bottom); the full bar equals total output. The chart always shows every category so the composition is visible. Tip: click a legend entry to hide or show that category; double-click it to show that category alone.
Top 25 Subject Areas by Publication Count
Top 25 Publishers by Publication Count
Citation counts by OA status for the current filters, computed from a snapshot of all VIVA works. Read with care: differences between OA categories reflect field, journal, article type, and publication year as well as openness, so a higher figure for one category does not by itself show that making work open causes more citations. Learn more in About.
Citations per Work by OA Status
Citation Distribution by OA Status
Citation Advantage Over Time (vs. Closed)
Each year is normalized to that year's closed-access average (the 0% line). Positive values mean an OA category out-performs closed works published the same year, removing the effect of older papers simply having had more time to accrue citations. This chart works best with large numbers: a year-and-category cell with fewer than 10 works is left blank, so lines break or disappear under narrow filters (a single subfield or a small institution).
Citation figures are computed from a static snapshot of all VIVA works and respect every filter above.
Article processing charges (APCs) for VIVA output. Spend figures are OpenAlex estimates built from journal list prices and known discounts, not invoices. Works with a VIVA corresponding author (the default) are the ones whose APC a VIVA institution most likely paid; use the toggle in the filter bar to switch to any-author view. Spend charts are computed from a snapshot of all VIVA works, so every filter applies, including OA status (for example, select gold and hybrid in turn to compare spend). See About for caveats.
Estimated APC Spend by Publisher
Top 25 publishers by estimated APC spend for the current filters (sum of estimated APCs paid, USD). Publisher groups (for example Springer Nature) include their imprints, so a work can count toward both a group and its imprint. Each bar is split by OA category; gold and hybrid account for nearly all APC spend. Tip: click a legend entry to hide or show that category; double-click it to show that category alone.
Top Journals by Estimated APC Spend
The 15 journals with the highest estimated APC spend for the current filters (sum of estimated APCs paid, USD).
Estimated APC Spend by Institution
Estimated APC spend (USD) for each selected VIVA institution under the current filters. The data table lists every institution with spend.
Journal APC List Prices Over Time
Published list prices (USD) by year from OpenAlex source records. Choose journals to compare: the list shows the journals with the most works under the current filters, ordered by that article count, so the publisher, subfield, and institution filters change which journals appear. The dashed line is the median list price across all listed journals with price data. Price history is a new OpenAlex field and is not yet available for every journal.
Journals to compareAbout this dashboard
What this dashboard shows
This dashboard is a collaboration between OpenAlex (opens in new tab) and VIVA (opens in new tab), Virginia's academic library consortium. It was created in 2026 to inform consortium- and institution-level collection development decisions, open access strategy, data storytelling, and more.
It tracks the scholarly publishing output of VIVA's 69 member institutions using OpenAlex, an open catalog of the global research system, and is organized into two sections:
- OA Agreements covers the publishers with which VIVA holds, or previously held, a read and publish or other open access agreement.
- VIVA Publications covers everything VIVA institutions publish, across all publishers: overall trends, subject areas, publishers, citation impact, and APC costs.
Most charts are interactive: click a bar, dot, or slice to open the underlying works in OpenAlex, and use the buttons in a chart's top-right corner to download it as an image or download its data as a CSV file. Every chart also has a "View data table" link with the same numbers in accessible, sortable form.
Before you follow a "View in OpenAlex" link, create a free OpenAlex account at openalex.org/signup (opens in new tab) and sign in. Anonymous visitors share a small query allowance, so without an account you may see a "limit exceeded" message when you open a query from the dashboard.
Filters and chart legends
The filter bar at the top selects the data the charts are built from: author scope, institution type, institutions, years, publishers, source type, and subfield. Each chart's legend then controls what that one chart displays. The two are deliberately separate, so hiding a category with a legend does not change the filter bar, and vice versa.
- Institution type and Institutions are both multi-select. Pick one or more types first; the Institutions list then offers the members of those types, and you can narrow further to any set of institutions.
- Publishers is multi-select, so you can build a custom group (for example, the largest five publishers, or the publishers an institution holds its own agreements with). Selecting several publishers never double counts a work: the selection is one combined query, and a work matching more than one selected publisher is counted once.
- Source type is the type of venue a work appeared in (journal, conference, repository, ebook platform, book series). It defaults to journal on the OA Agreements tab and to all types on VIVA Publications. Conference proceedings published in journal-like series (for example, ACM proceedings) count as journal. Note that a journal can still contain conference abstracts, datasets, or other non-article items.
- OA status defaults to all categories on every tab. It selects the categories counted on the Citation Comparison and APC Fees views, and the categories shown at first on the Subject Areas and Publishers charts. The OA Agreements charts and the other composition charts (the stacked bars over time) always show every category so the mix stays interpretable; use their legends to hide one.
Publisher names that look like duplicates (for example, Springer Nature next to Nature Portfolio and Springer Science+Business Media) are different entries in OpenAlex's publisher hierarchy rather than errors: a publishing group is listed alongside the imprints it owns, and selecting the group includes all of its imprints. The Publishers filter, the Publishers chart, and the APC spend-by-publisher chart list publishing organizations only; owners of a press (University of Oxford, University of Cambridge, Institute of Physics) are left out so that Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press, and IOP Publishing appear once each.
Open access categories
- Gold
- Published in a fully open access journal. Usually funded by an article processing charge (APC).
- Hybrid
- Open article in a subscription journal, typically via an APC or a read and publish agreement. Articles in Subscribe to Open (S2O) journals, which charge no author-facing fees, are also classified as hybrid, because OpenAlex classifies the journal by its subscription model rather than by how each year's open access is funded.
- Diamond
- Published in a fully open access journal that charges no APC (free to read and to publish).
- Green
- Free copy available in a repository (such as an institutional repository or preprint server), while the published version may be paywalled.
- Bronze
- Free to read on the publisher's site but without an open license, so access could be withdrawn.
- Closed
- No known free-to-read version.
Any VIVA author vs. VIVA corresponding author
The toggle in the filter bar controls which publications count as "VIVA output":
- VIVA corresponding author (the default on every tab) counts only works whose corresponding author is at a selected VIVA institution. The corresponding author's institution is typically the one that pays the APC and the one whose agreement applies, so this is the right setting for agreement uptake and APC spend.
- Any VIVA author counts every work with at least one author affiliated with a selected VIVA institution. Use this to describe the full research footprint of VIVA institutions.
Counts under "any author" are always larger, and works co-authored across multiple VIVA institutions are counted once per view (not once per institution). Your choice stays in place as you move between tabs until you press Reset all.
Reading the charts
- Stacked bars over time show the OA composition of output: the full bar is total works, with closed at the bottom and open categories stacked above it. These charts always display every OA category (regardless of the OA status filter) so the composition stays interpretable; hide categories via the chart legend. On the Overview, a "View by institution" table under the chart breaks the same numbers down with institutions as rows.
- Citations per work can be viewed three ways. The strip plot shows every work as a dot (sampled when there are many), with the mean and median marked; its vertical axis is clipped just above the 90th percentile so the bulk of works stays readable, and the highest-cited works sit above the top of the chart. The box plot shows median, quartiles, and whiskers, with the same clipped axis. The dumbbell shows mean versus median on an unclipped axis; the gap between them shows how much a few highly cited papers pull the average up. Full statistics are in every option's data table. Citation counts are heavily skewed, so the median is usually the fairer "typical work" figure.
- Citation Advantage Over Time compares each OA category to closed works published in the same year: the 0% line is that year's closed-access average, so a value of +40% means those OA works average 40% more citations than same-year closed works. This removes the head start older papers have in accumulating citations. Any year-and-category cell with fewer than 10 works is left blank, so the chart works best with large numbers.
- A caution on citation comparisons. Differences in citations between OA categories reflect field, journal, article type, and publication year as well as openness, so a higher citation count for one category does not by itself establish that making a work open access causes more citations.
- Citation and APC spend figures come from a periodically regenerated snapshot of all VIVA works rather than live queries; the generation date is shown on those tabs. They respect every filter, including the author-scope toggle.
APC figures: important caveats
- Estimated spend uses OpenAlex's estimate of the APC actually paid per article, which accounts for known waivers, discounts, and agreements where possible. It is an estimate from list prices, not invoice data, and will differ from what institutions actually paid.
- Articles published under a read and publish agreement may show an estimated APC even though VIVA's agreement covered it; the "value of OA in OA-agreement journals" card estimates that covered value using list prices.
- List price history (the prices-over-time chart) comes from a newly added OpenAlex field and is not yet populated for every journal or year; journals without data are marked in the picker.
- Diamond and green OA involve no APC.
- List prices shown are the journal's published prices, not prices specific to VIVA-authored articles.
VIVA OA Agreements
For more information about VIVA's open access agreements, including what is covered under each agreement, see the pages linked below. Most agreements do not cover every journal from a publisher, and the covered titles can change from year to year, so the OA Agreements charts show all of a publisher's output rather than only the covered titles.
Data source and freshness
Trend, breakdown, subject, and publisher figures are queried live from the OpenAlex API, so they reflect OpenAlex's current data. OpenAlex is updated continuously; recent publications can take a few weeks to appear, and the most recent year is always incomplete. The citation and APC spend figures come from a snapshot of all VIVA works that is regenerated periodically. Every live chart links to the equivalent query on openalex.org so you can verify or extend any number.
Questions or data corrections: contact VIVA, or support@openalex.org for OpenAlex data issues.
Changes after launch
The dashboard's code is maintained in a repository in the OpenAlex GitHub organization, with VIVA as a named collaborator. Changes to the member list (a merger or a new member), a new or ended OA agreement, and hiding or removing a chart or tab are all small edits there. VIVA can propose them directly, or email OpenAlex and we will make them.