Charting Open Science Landscapes: Institutional Patterns of Engagement Across U.S. Academic Libraries

This study investigates how U.S. academic libraries engage with open science practices across institutions with varying levels of research intensity. Building on a previous systematized review of 3,752 publications from 588 institutions, this analysis shifts focus from the publication level to the institutional level, identifying thematic overlaps in open science engagement. Using the Carnegie Classification framework, we assess variations in institutional engagement across open science themes (e.g., open access, open data, and open educational resources). Our findings show that very high research institutions (R1s) demonstrate the most extensive and comprehensive engagement across themes, with frequent thematic overlap indicating integrated support across the research lifecycle. High research institutions (R2s) also exhibit broad thematic engagement but with less extensive cross-theme integration. In contrast, institutions with lower research intensity, including Doctoral/Professional Universities (DPUs), Master’s Colleges and Universities (MCUs), Baccalaureate Colleges (BCs), and Associate’s Colleges (ACs), engage with fewer themes, and tend to concentrate on activities related to open access and open educational resources. The greatest disparities in institutional engagement occur in themes requiring technical expertise and infrastructure, such as open data and open reproducible research, suggesting resource and capacity gaps across institution types. Our findings are suggestive of structural inequities that limit the capacity of less-resourced institutions to engage comprehensively with open science. We discuss the implications of these findings, emphasizing the need for targeted policies, inclusive funding models, and consortial support to promote equitable participation in open science across the U.S. higher education landscape.