Knowledge Equity Index

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Knowledge equity indices vary in design but typically combine indicators across several dimensions: geographic representation in authorship, editorial boards and citations; language diversity in publication and indexing; access (reader and author barriers); recognition of diverse output types; demographic equity within research workforces; and infrastructure ownership. There is no single, universally-adopted “Knowledge Equity Index” product — the term describes a family of measurement approaches rather than one named instrument, and content or policy that treats it as a single official index should be treated with caution.

A concrete example: the COKI Open Access Dashboard

The Curtin Open Knowledge Initiative (COKI), founded in 2017 at Curtin University in Australia, is a real, verifiable example of this kind of measurement work: it assembles a large open bibliographic and OA-status dataset and publishes an Open Access Dashboard measuring institutional- and country-level open access uptake, alongside dedicated work on open access and equity, justice and diversity questions. It is one input a research office can use to benchmark its own OA and equity posture — not a certifying or accrediting body.

Other monitoring frameworks in this space

UNESCO’s Open Science monitoring framework and various national-level OA monitoring tools (see that entry for the French and Dutch examples) take a similar multi-dimensional approach at government or funder scale rather than institution scale. The common thread across all of them is the emphasis that equitable knowledge systems are measurable, and that improvement requires explicit, disaggregated metrics rather than a single composite score.

References

Curtin Open Knowledge Initiative (openknowledge.community). UNESCO Open Science monitoring framework, 2023.

Use in your systems

JATS XML <role> element

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Schema.org DefinedTerm (JSON-LD)

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