Journal publisher Milano University Press missing/wrong in OpenAlex

[Andrea]

Hi,

we discovered that Milano University Press (https://milanoup.unimi.it/eng/home-2.html), the academic publisher of University of Milan, is always missing as publisher of its journals in OpenAlex.

Below our checks via API, we tried to send email and support requests, but with no reply.

Can you help to fix?

Even license is sometimes wrong (Milano University Press is a diamond publisher).

Best regards,
Andrea Collivignarelli

From this API call Milano University Press results as an institution, that is wrong, it should be a publisher: https://api.openalex.org/works?page=1&filter=authorships.institutions.lineage:i4387153939&sort=cited_by_count:desc&per_page=10&apc_sum=false&cited_by_count_sum=false

From this other, Milano University press results as connected only to a book https://api.openalex.org/works?page=1&filter=authorships.institutions.lineage:i4387153939,authorships.institutions.lineage:!i4210142437&sort=cited_by_count:desc&per_page=10&apc_sum=false&cited_by_count_sum=false

From this API call results that University of Milan is a publisher, but it should be an institution: https://api.openalex.org/publishers/P4310317595

All the journals related to University of Milan (except  https://openalex.org/sources/S4210209257 , that is a mistake) should be related to Milano University Press as their publisher: https://api.openalex.org/works?group_by=primary_location.source.id&per_page=200&filter=primary_location.source.publisher_lineage:p4310317595

 

[Andrea]

Does anyone have any suggestions?

[Bianca Kramer]

Hi Andrea, 

It looks like there are a couple of things going on at the same time:

1) First off, indeed Milan University Press is only listed as an institution in OpenAlex, not (also or exclusively) as a publisher. 

In contrast, University of Milan is listed as both an institution, a publisher and a funder. In the API, you can see the attribute 'roles' that lists these multiple roles, if any. Many organizations have these multiple roles listed in OpenAlex. 

My guess is that the institution role for Milan University Press might be directly taken from ROR, where the Press is listed as type Education, with University of Milan as parent organization. 

In general, university presses are a bit of a mixed bag in OpenAlex, with some listed only as institution (often correlated with similar ROR situation as Milan University Press), some listed only as publisher (often without ROR), and some as both (in which case, the press itself often has the type 'Company' or 'Other' in ROR). 
I made an overview of the relevant records here (for entries in OpenAlex' institution and publisher lists with 'University Press' in their name)

It would require a change by OpenAlex to have Milan University Press also added as a publisher entity (and then a subsequent assigment as publisher to the relevant source titles). Perhaps as a Press, you could also consider whether your listing in ROR is considered accurate. 

2) Second, the question why in some case Milan University Press is erroneously listed as author affiliation is an interesting separate issue -  though of course related to the Press being included in the list of institutions in the first place :) The OpenAlex schema has an attribute 'authorships.affiliations' which lists the raw affiliation strings that were used to match an author affiliation to an institiutional id. For Milan University Press, these are the unique raw affiliaiton strings listed:

"Milano University Press, 2024."
"Milano University Press, 2022."
Milano University Press Via Festa del Perdono 7 -20122 Milano
"Università degli Studi di Milano Matematica per il corso di Economia & Management / Giovanni Puccetti. Milano: Milano University Press, 2023."
 Milano
milano
MILANO
Milano
"Milano: Milano University Press, 2024."
"-nity still matter, Milano University Press, Milano."

Obviously, the assignment based solely on "Milano' (the majority of cases) would be a mistake (and something for OpenAlex to fix / finetune) - the cases where the string "Milano University Press" is detected as raw affiliation string are more interesting. 

These are the work-ids where this occurred - all but 1 are books where it could be that the extended author bios are considered as well. One of them is an article (see pdf), where the wrong lines seem to be taken as byline/affiliation. 

https://api.openalex.org/W4398204433 (book)
https://api.openalex.org/W4313060078 (book)
https://api.openalex.org/W4323667613 (book)
https://api.openalex.org/W4361216224 (article)
https://api.openalex.org/W4399785629 (book)
https://api.openalex.org/W4376622705 (book)
https://api.openalex.org/W4392818121 (book)
https://api.openalex.org/W4313060078 (book)
https://api.openalex.org/W4399896107 (book)

I realize this primarily answers the question about the potential causes, not the cause of action... but I hope it is helpful nonetheless. 

kind regards,
Bianca Kramer 

Sesame Open Science 

https://sesameopenscience.org

Op do 24 apr 2025 om 10:37 schreef Andrea <andrea.coll...@unimi.it>:

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