University journals in the global academic publishing landscape: Mapping over 19,000 diverse titles based on Ulrichsweb data

Abstract

Universities have been an instrumental part of the scholarly publishing landscape dating back several centuries, but comprehensive mapping of the presence of universities' involvement in publishing of journals is lacking. Using Ulrichsweb as the primary source and complementing it with data from Scopus, Web of Science, DOAJ and OpenAlex, we compiled a dataset of 19,414 active, peer-reviewed university journals from 148 countries using a multilingual identification method. The results reveal significant disparities in coverage: nearly three-quarters of the journals are indexed in OpenAlex, almost half in DOAJ, fewer than a quarter in Scopus, and fewer than a fifth on the Web of Science Core Collection. From a global perspective, university journals are heavily clustered to a few countries, notably the United States, Indonesia and Brazil. University journals are characterized by strong linguistic diversity, with more than a third publishing exclusively in non-English languages. The social sciences and humanities dominate the disciplinary profile. This study establishes a baseline for further research into bibliodiversity, equity and the role of universities in scholarly communication.