The 'Big Three' of Scientific Information: A comparative bibliometric review of Web of Science, Scopus, and OpenAlex

TL;DR

This study compares Web of Science, Scopus, and OpenAlex across coverage, metadata, and features, providing insights to guide research assessment strategies through systematic review and bibliometric analysis.

Contribution

It offers a comprehensive comparison of three major bibliographic databases using systematic review and bibliometric analysis, highlighting their differences and overlaps.

Findings

Web of Science has broader coverage of traditional journals.

OpenAlex offers more open-access records and diverse linguistic content.

Significant overlap exists between the databases, but each has unique strengths.

Abstract

The present comparative study examines the three main multidisciplinary bibliographic databases, Web of Science Core Collection, Scopus, and OpenAlex, with the aim of providing up-to-date evidence on coverage, metadata quality, and functional features to help inform strategic decisions in research assessment. The report is structured into two complementary methodological sections. First, it presents a systematic review of recent scholarly literature that investigates record volume, open-access coverage, linguistic diversity, reference coverage, and metadata quality; this is followed by an original bibliometric analysis of the 2015-2024 period that explores longitudinal distribution, document types, thematic profiles, linguistic differences, and overlap between databases. The text concludes with a ten-point executive summary and five recommendations.