External data

Details about external data used in Unsub

The following is a list of the external data sources used, including what they are used for, and how often the data is updated.

Citations

Data source: OpenAlex

Update frequency: Quarterly (4x per year)

Used in Unsub: Journal level Cost Per Use calculation (if you include citations in your scenario parameters). Citations data shown in single journal view or in the table view in a scenario. Institutional level APC Report.

Authorships

Data source: OpenAlex

Update frequency: Quarterly (4x per year)

Used in Unsub: Journal level Cost Per Use calculation (if you include authorships in your scenario parameters). Authorships data shown in single journal view or in the table view in a scenario. Institutional level APC Report.

Journal metadata

This includes journal title, ISSNs, publisher, open access status, and whether title is currently publishing (based on date of last DOI published).

Data source: OpenAlex

Update frequency: Daily

Used in Unsub: Determine whether a journal should be included in Unsub dashboards or not (see Why don't I see a certain title in my dashboard?), and as the source of truth to link together journals, user uploaded data, and any external journal level data.

Journal embargo periods

Data source: Manually collected. We will soon switch over to using data from oa.works

Update frequency: Not currently updated

Used in Unsub: Shown in single journal view in Unsub dashboards, and used in calculating Cost Per Use

Publisher societies

Data source: Manually collected.

Update frequency: Not currently updated

Used in Unsub: Shown in single journal view in Unsub dashboards

Number of papers

Data source: OpenAlex

Update frequency: Daily

Used in Unsub: Journal level usage forecast.

ROR and Grid identifiers

Data source: Microsoft Academic Graph

Update frequency: Not currently updated; we'll switch to OpenAlex in the near future.

Used in Unsub: Used to link together many kinds of data (journals, authors, etc.) to institutions.

APC prices

Data source: We get these from publisher websites.

Update frequency: Not updated

Used in Unsub: For the institutional APC Report for the big five publishers (Elsevier, Wiley, Springer Nature, Taylor & Francis, SAGE) only.

Unpaywall

Data source: Unpaywall

Update frequency: Every 6 hours (4x/day)

Used in Unsub: Used to determine usage patterns at a journal title level. Also used in creating citation and authorship data (see above for how citation and authorship data are used).

Unpaywall Browser Extension

Data source: Unpaywall Browser Extension data; aggregated statistics about journal-level year of publication usage derived from usage of people with the Unpaywall browser extension installed

Update frequency: Updated October 2022. Likely update frequency: annual

Used in Unsub: Used to determine usage patterns at a journal title level.