Making open science more discoverable: A bibliometrics analysis of the top open access articles in the Nordic region

This study examines the impact of open access (OA) research publications of Nordic regions using gold, green and hybrid OA publications from Web of Science. Until very recently, the Web of Science included a “gold” OA filter option representing only a fraction of OA. Currently, Web of Science partnered with Impact Story allowing WoS users to access approximately18 million verified, legal open access articles via Impactstory’s oaDOI knowledgebase. In this study, we identify recently published top performing OA articles and reviews (year of publication 2014) from Denmark, Finland Norway, Sweden, Iceland and Nordic region. We define as top papers performing above the world average, normalized by research area, publication year and document type. We analyze the journals in which OA Nordic papers were most heavily published in and the journals’ academic status (journal impact factor), the subject area categorization of the OA research output, the collaboration networks of Nordic OA papers and the major funding bodies that have been acknowledged by the Nordic OA papers.