Artículo

Evaluating the linguistic coverage of OpenAlex: An assessment of metadata accuracy and completeness

Resumen

Clarivate’s Web of Science (WoS) and Elsevier’s Scopus have been for decades the main sources of bibliometric information. Although highly curated, these closed, proprietary databases are largely biased toward English-language publications, underestimating the use of other languages in research dissemination. Launched in 2022, OpenAlex promised comprehensive, inclusive, and open-source research information. While already in use by scholars and research institutions, the quality of its metadata is currently still being assessed. This paper contributes to this literature by assessing the completeness and accuracy of OpenAlex’s metadata related to language, through a comparison with WoS, as well as an in-depth manual validation of a sample of 6836 articles. Results show that OpenAlex exhibits a far more balanced linguistic coverage than WoS. However, language metadata are not always accurate, which leads OpenAlex to overestimate the place of English while underestimating that of other languages. If used critically, OpenAlex can provide comprehensive and representative analyses of languages used for scholarly publishing, but more work is needed at infrastructural level to ensure the quality of metadata on language.
Céspedes, Lucía (58664604300); Kozlowski, Diego (58708470400); Pradier, Carolina (59256828500); Sainte-Marie, Maxime Holmberg (48361689700); Shokida, Natsumi Solange (59256719700); Benz, Pierre (57195608832); Poitras, Constance (58109068600); Ninkov, Anton Boudreau (57193712658); Ebrahimy, Saeideh (59158038800); Ayeni, Philips (57193542400); Filali, Sarra (59358049900); Li, Bing (58660645000); Larivière, Vincent (14028805600)
Evaluating the linguistic coverage of OpenAlex: An assessment of metadata accuracy and completeness
2025
10.1002/asi.24979
https://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri?eid=2-s2.0-85214668836&doi=10.1002%2fasi.24979&partnerID=40&md5=c8cd84d2b9d6c968d953583ae72d53e0
Chaire UNESCO sur la Science Ouverte, École de bibliothéconomie et des sciences de l’information, Université de Montréal, Montreal, QC, Canada; Consortium Érudit, Université de Montréal, Montreal, QC, Canada; Danish Centre for Studies in Research and Research Policy, Department of Political Sciences, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark; Department of Design, Media and Educational Science, University of Southern Denmark, Odense, Denmark; Department of Knowledge and Information Science, Shiraz University, Shiraz, Iran; Chancellor Paterson Library, Lakehead University, Thunder Bay, ON, Canada; Centre interuniversitaire de recherche sur la science et la technologie, Université du Québec à Montréal, Montreal, QC, Canada; Institute of Science and S&T Management, Dalian University of Technology, Dalian, China; Department of Science and Innovation, National Research Foundation Centre of Excellence in Scientometrics and Science, Technology and Innovation Policy, Stellenbosch University, Stellenbosch, South Africa; Observatoire des sciences et des technologies, Université du Québec à Montréal, Montreal, QC, Canada
All Open Access; Hybrid Gold Open Access
Scopus
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