Monitoring Strategic Technologies Using Open Research Information

European and national policy frameworks addressing strategic autonomy and knowledge security, such as the EU Strategic Technologies for Europe Platform (STEP) and the Dutch National Technology Strategy (NTS), identify technologies that are expected to drive economic competitiveness and societal transitions. Monitoring progress in these areas informs funding and governance decisions, but the information used for this purpose often relies on proprietary data sources that limit transparency, reproducibility, and independent verification. Our work presents a framework for profiling academic research in these strategic technologies using open research information. Developed in collaboration with Universiteiten van Nederland (the association of Dutch universities), the project examines the contribution of Dutch universities to the objectives of the NTS and demonstrates how research libraries can support policy monitoring using openly available metadata. This approach differs from previous approaches in two important ways. First, our approach is fully transparent. Second, it is relatively simple and flexible and can be quickly adapted to new developments in the technologies we are describing. The framework is built on OpenAlex as the primary data source. A large language model is used to classify research outputs into the technology clusters defined in the NTS, enabling alignment between policy categories and scholarly research fields. We combine standard bibliometric indicators on research output and citation impact with a measure of relative specialisation, allowing institutional and national strengths to be assessed in an international context. The results show that it is feasible to construct a transparent and reproducible evidence base for monitoring strategic technologies using open data and methods. The framework illustrates how research libraries can use their expertise in working with research data to offer strategic analytical support. As such, it provides a practical example of how open research information can be used to inform research assessment and policy discussions without dependence on proprietary systems.