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

Author

Listed:
  • Lucía Céspedes
  • Diego Kozlowski
  • Carolina Pradier
  • Maxime Holmberg Sainte‐Marie
  • Natsumi Solange Shokida
  • Pierre Benz
  • Constance Poitras
  • Anton Boudreau Ninkov
  • Saeideh Ebrahimy
  • Philips Ayeni
  • Sarra Filali
  • Bing Li
  • Vincent Larivière

Abstract

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.

Suggested Citation

  • Lucía Céspedes & Diego Kozlowski & Carolina Pradier & Maxime Holmberg Sainte‐Marie & Natsumi Solange Shokida & Pierre Benz & Constance Poitras & Anton Boudreau Ninkov & Saeideh Ebrahimy & Philips Ayen, 2025. "Evaluating the linguistic coverage of OpenAlex: An assessment of metadata accuracy and completeness," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 76(6), pages 884-895, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:jinfst:v:76:y:2025:i:6:p:884-895
    DOI: 10.1002/asi.24979
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    Citations

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    Cited by:

    1. Jack H. Culbert & Anne Hobert & Najko Jahn & Nick Haupka & Marion Schmidt & Paul Donner & Philipp Mayr, 2025. "Reference coverage analysis of OpenAlex compared to Web of Science and Scopus," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 130(4), pages 2475-2492, April.
    2. Nick Haupka, 2026. "Presenting a classifier to improve the identification of research journal publications in OpenAlex," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 131(2), pages 925-941, February.
    3. Najko Jahn, 2026. "Estimating transformative agreement impact on hybrid open access: a comparative large-scale study using Scopus, Web of Science and open metadata," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 131(2), pages 901-924, February.
    4. Zhe Cao & Lin Zhang & Ying Huang & Robin Haunschild, 2026. "How does the academia refer to open research information data sources? A review study based on OpenAlex and Microsoft Academic series," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 131(2), pages 873-899, February.
    5. Yuyan Jiang & Jianxia Ma, 2025. "Are Nature Index journals a valid basis for academic assessment: a study of academic impact and disruptive innovation assessment based on open bibliographic metadata and citation data," Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 12(1), pages 1-10, December.
    6. Kyle Higham & Hannah Kotula & Emma Scharfmann & Steve Gong & Gaétan de Rassenfosse, 2026. "A dataset of scientific citations in U.S. patent Office Actions," Working Papers 31, Chair of Science, Technology, and Innovation Policy.
    7. Thomas Scheidsteger & Robin Haunschild & Lutz Bornmann, 2025. "How similar are field-normalized citation impact scores obtained from OpenAlex and three popular commercial databases? An empirical comparison based on large German universities," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 130(7), pages 3537-3569, July.
    8. Anuška Ferligoj & Vladimir Batagelj & Marjan Cugmas & Franc Mali, 2025. "Bridging borders or widening gaps? The dynamics of European scientific collaboration networks," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 130(12), pages 7005-7030, December.
    9. Erica Andreose & Salvatore Di Marzo & Ivan Heibi & Silvio Peroni & Leonardo Zilli, 2026. "Analysing the coverage of the University of Bologna’s bibliographic and citation metadata in OpenCitations collections," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 131(2), pages 845-871, February.

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