2024/04/26 by Juan Pablo Alperín, Alperin, Juan Pablo, Jason Portenoy +7 · 9 citations
Business, Management and Accounting · #Big Data and Business Intelligence #Digital Libraries (cs.DL) #FOS: Computer and information sciences
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2404.17663
openalex publication_date 2024/04/26 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Scopus and the Web of Science have been the foundation for research in the science of science even though these traditional databases systematically underrepresent certain disciplines and world regions. In response, new inclusive databases, notably OpenAlex, have emerged. While many studies have begun using OpenAlex as a data source, few critically assess its limitations. This study, conducted in collaboration with the OpenAlex team, addresses this gap by comparing OpenAlex to Scopus across a number of dimensions. The analysis concludes that OpenAlex is a superset of Scopus and can be a reliable alternative for some analyses, particularly at the country level. Despite this, issues of metadata accuracy and completeness show that additional research is needed to fully comprehend and address OpenAlex's limitations. Doing so will be necessary to confidently use OpenAlex across a wider set of analyses, including those that are not at all possible with more constrained databases.