Trends in Open Access Academic Outputs of State Agricultural Universities in India: Patterns from OpenAlex

Purpose: The study examines the Open Access (OA) landscape of Indian state agricultural universities, focusing on OA growth, leading institutions, prolific authors, preferred sources, funding, APC usage, and trending topics. It aims to identify research gaps, guide future research, and support policymakers in developing effective OA policies Design/methodology/approach The experiment utilized the OpenAlex database to collect global open access (OA) publications from Indian state agricultural universities over the past ten years (2014-2023). Using the Research Organization Registry ID, 97,536 publications were extracted. Data analysis was performed with OpenRefine, and ArcGIS 10.8 and Microsoft Excel were used for visualization. Findings: The global OA research output from state agricultural universities amounted to 65,889 publications across five OA categories: Green OA (7.35%), Diamond OA (6.74%), Gold OA (57.27%), Hybrid OA (9.24%), and Bronze OA (19.41%). Notably, 78.34% of articles were published in 864 low-impact domestic journals. Tamil Nadu Agricultural University produced the most publications in Gold, Diamond, Hybrid, and Bronze OA categories, while Punjab Agricultural University excelled in Green OA and received the highest funding, incurring the most article processing charges (APCs). Collaborative research focusing on agricultural policies, rice water management, soil fertility, and crop productivity had a greater impact. Originality/value The experiment is the first effort to evaluate the OA global academic research outputs of Indian state agriculture universities. The findings offer institutions, state governments, and funding agencies the opportunity to prioritise open-access publishing to promote sustainable agricultural research. Research limitations/implications The study is limited to the publications data indexed in the OpenAlex database.