Abstract According to scholars of higher education in Iran, a considerable part of Iran's higher education system problems is because of ineffectiveness of decisions and policies of this sector and its non-reliance on scientific and empirical evidence. Open data policy making, as a new concept which considers using public participation in public policy making, can provide scientific and rational backing for policy optimization in Iran's higher education system. Therefore, this mixed approach study attempts to identify requirements of open data policy making in Iran's higher education system with a qualitative approach. At the next step, it applies regression test to analyze role of identified requirements in policy optimization. Results of regression analysis showed that socio-cultural requirements, managerial requirements, political-legal requirements and technical-technological requirements respectively could explain 0.304, 0.273, 0.197 & 0.152 of dependent variable variance.