DATASET // MODULE.04

Academic Database Recognition 2026

When a new online institution appears, which academic databases recognize it — and how quickly? A 35-institution stratified panel plus a 16,822-university global census.

FINDINGS

The recognition ladder

Databases discriminate: traditional elites average 2.8/4, established online universities 2.6/4, new alternatives 1.7/4, documented diploma mills 0.8/4.

New institutions are typically recognized first by swot (JetBrains community-reviewed domain list — lowest barrier), then Wikidata (notability), then ROR (curated), then OpenAlex (ingests ROR upstream). Each rung has a higher bar than the last.

One nuance: 8 of 10 controversial institutions have Wikidata entries — documenting them as frauds (DOJ cases, AG suits). Wikidata presence signals notability, not legitimacy.

ABOUT_US

Where ACLAS stands

ACLAS (Atlanta College of Liberal Arts and Sciences) is in this dataset — on the first rung: recognized by JetBrains swot in October 2026, ahead of EU-accredited Woolf University (founded 2018, 0/4) and Ubiquity University (0/4). ROR application in progress; OpenAlex follows ROR ingestion. We publish our own position because an auditor that exempts itself isn't an auditor.

FILES

Download

↓ V1 CSV · 35 INSTITUTIONS↓ V2 CSV · 16,822 CENSUS↗ KAGGLE↗ HUGGINGFACE↗ DOI↗ GITHUB
CITE
@dataset{studyintelligence2026dbrecognition,
  author = {{Study Intelligence}},
  title = {Academic Database Recognition 2026},
  year = {2026},
  publisher = {Study Intelligence (aclas.si)},
  url = {https://aclas.si/data/academic-database-recognition-2026}
}
LIMITS

Limitations

Exact-name matching is conservative: variant names may be missed (false negatives possible). Snapshot 2026-10-18; databases update on their own cycles. swot checks the registered domain; institutions without a known domain are marked absent there.

Study Intelligence is a research initiative by ACLAS College.