OpenAlex: The new (open data) kid on the block
- Bibliometrics
- E-Media
- Literature Search
This makes OpenAlex significantly more comprehensive than commercial citation databases such as Scopus or Web of Science. While the latter rely on a strict selection of indexed journals, OpenAlex does not curate the documents it contains, so users are responsible for evaluating the content for its scientific quality.
Broad database and diversity of content
In addition to a basic stock of data from the Microsoft Academic Graph project (a now discontinued citation search engine similar to Google Scholar), the metadata from the DOI registration agency CrossRef forms the constantly growing data basis of OpenAlex. It is no coincidence that the name is a reference to the Library of Alexandria. One of OpenAlex's strengths therefore lies in its comprehensive database, which also provides a good representation of the humanities and social sciences, which are underrepresented in the traditional citation databases.
Open science and versatile interfaces
The first part of the name also says it all, as OpenAlex sees itself as part of the Open Science movement: The publication and citation data in OpenAlex are open data and are available under a CC-0 license, i.e. they are in the public domain and can be used in any scientific or commercial context without permission or compensation.
In addition to a web interface for conventional literature searches, OpenAlex offers a well-documented public API that can also be called up from relevant R or Python libraries or the network visualization tool VOSviewer.
Further information and contact persons
The Bibliometric Advisory Service of the University Library is happy to answer questions about OpenAlex and provide customized bibliometric evaluations from this data source. The database can be used, for example, for portfolio analyses, open access evaluations, cooperation networks and many other analyses.
Further reading:
Priem, J., Piwowar, H., & Orr, R. (2022). OpenAlex: A fully-open index of scholarly works, authors, venues, institutions, and concepts. ArXiv. https://arxiv.org/abs/2205.01833
Dalmeet Singh Chawla: Massive open index of scholarly papers launches. Nature. 24 January 2022 doi:10.1038/d41586-022-00138-y