University of Groningen world's number one in open access

The compilers of the Leiden Ranking have been doing things a little bit differently for eight years now. Instead of coming up with a single winner, they feature several, according to different data and criteria.

Universities’ reputations and teaching quality are not taken into account here. Instead, the emphasis is put on scientific impact, which is measured by the number of times each scientific article has been cited in other articles. Two other metrics used are the number of articles published by women and the number of open-access publications.

Wageningen University & Research (WUR), Utrecht University (UU), Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (VU Amsterdam) and the University of Groningen (UG) lead the pack of Dutch universities in most areas.

Open access
According to the Leiden Ranking, the University of Groningen is number one worldwide in terms of open access. In 2018-2021, a staggering 95 percent of the university’s publications were freely accessible. In last year’s ranking, it was just under 88 percent. Universities in Iran and India have the highest percentage of non-public publications.

Impact
VU Amsterdam does really well in terms of scientific impact. 7.9 percent of its publications rank among the most-cited 5 percent in the world. UU and WUR are tied for second place, with 7.8 percent.

Universities can also be ranked according to the percentage of articles that are world-leading, i.e. those in the top one percent of most-cited articles. If this criterion is applied for Dutch universities, WUR tops the table (1.9 percent), followed by UU (1.8 percent) and VU Amsterdam (1.7 percent).

Gender
The ranking also allows you to look at the number of publications authored by men and women. In the Netherlands, women are a minority among scholars. VU Amsterdam scores highest on female authorship, with 42.9 percent. It is closely followed by Erasmus University Rotterdam, with 42 percent, while Delft University of Technology scores lowest with a mere 18.7 percent.

It’s worth noting that of the 1,411 universities ranked worldwide, only 27 have more publications by women than by men. With 63.1 percent, Oslo Metropolitan University (Norway) has the highest share of women writers.

Collaboration
When it comes to academic collaboration, VU Amsterdam is doing well for a Dutch university. 92.4 percent of its publications were written collaboratively with other universities or organisations. Not a single Dutch university ranked under 80 percent in this respect, with the Delft University of Technology bringing up the rear – as it did last year – with 81.9 percent.