Beyond openness: Inclusiveness and usability of Chinese scholarly data in OpenAlex

TL;DR

This study assesses OpenAlex's coverage and metadata quality for Chinese scholarly data, revealing significant gaps and inconsistencies that hinder its inclusiveness and usability for Chinese research outputs.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive evaluation of OpenAlex's coverage and metadata accuracy for Chinese journals, highlighting areas for improvement in open scholarly data integration.

Findings

OpenAlex indexes only 37% of Chinese core journals

Metadata completeness varies, with key fields often missing or inaccurate

Language and DOI information are frequently incorrect or incomplete

Abstract

OpenAlex, launched in 2022 as a fully open scholarly data source, promises greater inclusiveness compared to traditional proprietary databases. This study evaluates whether OpenAlex delivers on that promise by examining its coverage and metadata quality for Chinese-language journals and their articles. Using the 2023 edition of A Guide to the Core Journals of China (GCJC) and Wanfang Data as a benchmark, we analyze three aspects: (1) journal-level coverage, (2) article-level coverage, and (3) completeness and accuracy of metadata fields. Results show that OpenAlex indexes only 37% of GCJC journals and 24% of their articles, with substantial disciplinary and temporal variation. Metadata quality is uneven: while basic fields such as title and publication year are complete, bibliographic details, author affiliations, and cited references are frequently missing or inaccurate. DOI coverage is limited, and language information is often incorrect, with most Chinese-language articles labeled as English. These findings highlight significant challenges for achieving full inclusiveness and usability in research evaluation and related activities. We conclude with recommendations for improving data aggregation strategies, DOI registration practices, and metadata standardization to enhance the integration of local scholarly outputs into global open infrastructures.