Insights into OpenAlex Data Quality
The OPENBIB consortium of the Kompetenznetzwerk Bibliometrie (KB) has published its formally internal report “Meilensteinzusammenfassung” on OpenAlex data quality via Zenodo.
This report describes the status of work in the collaboration project OPENBIB within the Kompetenznetzwerk Bibliometrie and provides a recommendation to KB for dealing with OpenAlex from 2025. The focus is on the results of the coverage analysis within the OPENBIB project. In addition, the supporting work of FIZ Karlsruhe in data provision and the KBMINE project with a focus on author identification and Open Access references are presented.
The report presents the following main conclusions:
- In the future (2025ff), OpenAlex should be integrated into KB’s bibliometric database in parallel with Web of Science and Scopus (hosting at FIZ Karlsruhe) and be probed via the KB data quality routines (“first class citizen”).
- KB users are recommended to utilise the substantially increased coverage of publications in OpenAlex in order to tap into this new analysis potential. However, the currently still deficient but greatly improving data quality must be taken into account.
- Further analyses, including comparisons with WoS and Scopus, are required to monitor the improvements in data quality in OpenAlex.
- The free re-use of OpenAlex data in the KB, as well as by third parties, enables new, innovative forms of communication in research, services, data infrastructure and skills transfer, which were previously prevented by the restrictive licences of proprietary data.
- At the same time, cooperation with similar national data infrastructures (e.g. France) and OpenAlex must be expanded to avoid duplication of work (int. governance)
The report is written in German, but includes a summary in English, and is based on contributions from University Göttingen, German Centre for Higher Education and Science Studies (DZHW), Forschungszentrum Jülich, GESIS, Bielefeld University and FIZ Karlsruhe.
Citation
@online{stahlschmidt2025,
author = {Stahlschmidt, Stephan},
title = {Insights into {OpenAlex} {Data} {Quality}},
date = {2025-06-24},
url = {http://www.open-bibliometrics.de/posts/20250624-OPENBIBm2Report/},
langid = {en}
}