Universities in the Leiden Ranking 2023 As Figure 1 shows, the number of universities in the Leiden Ranking keeps increasing. Like in the last three editions of the ranking, a university needs to have at least 800 fractionally counted publications in the most recent four-year time window to be included in the ranking. This year 1411 universities meet this criterion, 93 more than last year and 235 more than in 2020.

Imagine academic publishing that is fast, transparent, and free. Is that a pipe dream or something within reach? We already have preprint publishing (fast), open peer review (transparent), and diamond/overlay journals (free). If we could connect these disparate initiatives, would that make our dream come true? And how could this best be done? These are questions that are currently being discussed by us and others at Leiden University.

In a previous blog post we introduced the CWTS knowledge agenda 2023-2028. Building on this, in the current post we present the new focal areas in which CWTS organizes its activities.

Academic research has become increasingly complex, multidisciplinary, collaborative, and transnational. The institutions that underpin research - including communication and evaluation systems - are trying to keep up, with varying levels of success. At the same time, our society is facing major challenges, including existential global health, welfare, and sustainability issues.

The scientific community is moving towards a more transparent way of conducting and reporting research. Scientific publications are becoming more and more openly accessible but openness should also extend to peer review, preprinting, preregistration, data sharing, metadata availability, and related issues.Research funders and other stakeholders are putting a significant effort into promoting open science practices in scholarly communication.

Industry-University partnership is now part of the governance canon of higher education. However, the multiple forms this type of partnership can adopt are not so clear for every junior-faculty, administrators, and from there to the top-management in the higher education sector.

Open science has gained significant momentum over the past few years, with various movements and initiatives emerging to promote sharing of scientific knowledge, data, and resources with the wider community. Open science is a broad term encompassing a range of practices that strive to increase transparency, inclusivity, and accessibility in science.

Most researchers will only think of their Curriculum Vitae (CV) when an application deadline is nearing. Yet a recent wave of initiatives to introduce so-called narrative CV formats by research funding bodies and universities across Europe have created debate about the affordances of an otherwise taken-for-granted bureaucratic genre.

The trip to the 26th International Conference on Science, Technology and Innovation Indicators (STI 2022) in Granada, Spain, was my first international trip since I had finished my one-year research stay in Leiden and come back to Taiwan. When I learned that the STI 2022 conference would be held physically, I was very excited about returning to Europe and reconnecting with the colleagues over there.

The adoption of open science practices has become a prominent topic of study for the science studies community. However, the research practices of the community itself are still quite traditional.

Research assessment has a long history continuously introducing new methods, tools, and agendas, for example, peer review of publications dating back to 17 ^th century and catalogues from the 19 ^th century that facilitated publication counting. This blog post discusses Responsible Research Assessment (RRA), an agenda gaining attention today.