Understanding discrepancies in the coverage of OpenAlex: the case of China

TL;DR

This study evaluates OpenAlex's coverage of Chinese research publications, revealing that despite increased coverage, significant gaps and discontinuities remain, especially affecting non-English-speaking countries.

Contribution

It provides a critical assessment of OpenAlex's coverage of Chinese and other non-English research outputs, highlighting limitations and regional disparities.

Findings

OpenAlex increases coverage of Chinese publications but remains incomplete.

Coverage gaps are more pronounced in non-English-speaking countries.

Discontinuities in data coverage can affect cross-national research analyses.

Abstract

Citation indexes play a crucial role for understanding how science is produced, disseminated, and used. However, these databases often face a critical trade-off: those offering extensive and high-quality coverage are typically proprietary, whereas publicly accessible datasets frequently exhibit fragmented coverage and inconsistent data quality. OpenAlex was developed to address this challenge, providing a freely available database with broad open coverage, with a particular emphasis on non-English speaking countries. Yet, few studies have assessed the quality of the OpenAlex dataset. This paper assesses the coverage, by OpenAlex, of China's papers, which shows an abnormal trend, and compares it with other countries that do not have English as their main language. Our analysis reveals that while OpenAlex increases the coverage of China's publications, primarily those disseminated by a national database, this coverage is incomplete and discontinuous when compared to other countries' records in the database. We observe similar issues in other non-English-speaking countries, with coverage varying across regions. These findings indicate that although OpenAlex expands coverage of research outputs, continuity issues persist and disproportionately affect certain countries. We emphasize the need for researchers to use OpenAlex data cautiously, being mindful of its potential limitations in cross-national analyses.