Étiquette : Bibliometrics

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Comparison of OpenAlex and Scopus coverage of German institutions’ publications in top-tier journals

Authors : Andrey Lovakov, Ivan Sterligov

OpenAlex has recently emerged as a leading alternative to proprietary bibliometric sources. However, concerns remain regarding the quality of its metadata, especially the institutional profiles which are crucial for evaluating organizations. This study assesses the quality of affiliation data in OpenAlex using German research institutions.

Publications from top-tier journals were analyzed and institutional publication counts in OpenAlex were systematically compared with counts in Scopus. The results show that OpenAlex generally contains more publications at the journal level, reflecting its broader coverage. However, institutional publication counts in OpenAlex are consistently lower, indicating missing or incorrectly assigned affiliations.

Nevertheless, the correlations between institutional outputs in both databases are very high, suggesting that relative institutional rankings remain stable. These findings suggest that OpenAlex is suitable for comparative institutional analyses in academic research but requires further improvement in affiliation metadata before it can be used for evaluation contexts that rely on absolute publication counts.

DOI : https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2605.01337

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Author Name Disambiguation in Scholarly Research: A Bibliometric Perspective

Authors : Hesham Amin Hamdy El Shamly, Subaveerapandiyan A.

The rapid expansion of scholarly publishing has amplified the long-standing challenge of author name ambiguity in academic databases. This issue, manifesting as homonymy and synonymy, undermines the accuracy of bibliometric analyses, author-level metrics, and research evaluation systems. Author Name Disambiguation (AND) has thus emerged as a critical focus area in digital scholarship, with evolving strategies ranging from supervised machine learning and graph-based models to the adoption of persistent digital identifiers like ORCID.

Despite notable advancements, significant challenges remain – particularly in linguistically diverse and underrepresented regions – where metadata inconsistencies, transliteration issues, and limited ORCID adoption exacerbate disambiguation errors. This study presents a comprehensive bibliometric analysis of 2,004 publications on AND from 2005 to 2024, sourced from the Scopus database.

Using tools such as Biblioshiny and VOSviewer, the analysis identifies publication trends, leading authors and institutions, core sources, co-authorship networks, and thematic evolution in the field. Findings highlight increasing international collaboration, the dominance of computer science-driven methodologies, and the critical role of metadata quality and institutional frameworks.

The study concludes with recommendations for inclusive, multilingual, and interoperable disambiguation systems, advocating for cross-disciplinary collaboration to ensure equitable author identification in global scholarly communication.

URL : Author Name Disambiguation in Scholarly Research: A Bibliometric Perspective

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1515/opis-2025-0035

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Using bibliometrics to detect questionable authorship and affiliation practices and their impact on global research metrics: A case study of 14 universities

Authors : Lokman I. Meho, Elie A. Akl

From 2019 to 2023, a subset of 80 highly published universities demonstrated research output increases exceeding 100%, compared to the global average of 20%. Among these, 14 institutions showed significant declines in first authorship rates, raising questions about their authorship and affiliation practices.

This study employed bibliometric analysis to examine shifts in authorship and affiliation dynamics at these universities. Key findings include a 234% rise in total publications, a 23 percentage point drop in first authorship rates, and an increase in hyper-prolific authors from 23 to 177. International collaborations surged, and several universities exhibited sharp rises in multiaffiliated publications. Additionally, the proportion of articles published in top 10% journals increased by 11 percentage points, and the proportion of articles ranked among the world’s top 10% most cited grew by 12 percentage points.

These trends raise concerns about the integrity of authorship and affiliation practices as they deviate from normative behavior, far exceeding those observed nationally and at top-ranked universities—Caltech, MIT, Princeton, and UC Berkeley.

The study emphasizes the need for collaborative reforms by universities, ranking agencies, publishers, and other entities, highlighting the importance of each entity’s role in preserving academic integrity and ensuring the reliability of global research metrics.

URL : Using bibliometrics to detect questionable authorship and affiliation practices and their impact on global research metrics: A case study of 14 universities

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1162/qss_a_00339

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Patent research in academic literature. Landscape and trends with a focus on patent analytics

Authors : Cristian Mejia, Yuya Kajikawa

Patent analytics is crucial for understanding innovation dynamics and technological trends. However, a comprehensive overview of this rapidly evolving field is lacking. This study presents a data-driven analysis of patent research, employing citation network analysis to categorize and examine research clusters. Here, we show that patent research is characterized by interconnected themes spanning fundamental patent systems, indicator development, methodological advancements, intellectual property management practices, and diverse applications.

We reveal central research areas in patent strategies, technological impact, and patent citation research while identifying emerging focuses on environmental sustainability and corporate innovation. The integration of advanced analytical techniques, including AI and machine learning, is observed across various domains. This study provides insights for researchers and practitioners, highlighting opportunities for cross-disciplinary collaboration and future research directions.

URL : Patent research in academic literature. Landscape and trends with a focus on patent analytics

DOI : https://doi.org/10.3389/frma.2024.1484685

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The use of ChatGPT for identifying disruptive papers in science: a first exploration

Authors : Lutz Bornmann, Lingfei Wu, Christoph Ettl

ChatGPT has arrived in quantitative research evaluation. With the exploration in this Letter to the Editor, we would like to widen the spectrum of the possible use of ChatGPT in bibliometrics by applying it to identify disruptive papers.

The identification of disruptive papers using publication and citation counts has become a popular topic in scientometrics. The disadvantage of the quantitative approach is its complexity in the computation. The use of ChatGPT might be an easy to use alternative.

URL : The use of ChatGPT for identifying disruptive papers in science: a first exploration

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-024-05176-z

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On The Peer Review Reports: Does Size Matter?

Authors : Abdelghani Maddi, Luis Miotti

Amidst the ever-expanding realm of scientific production and the proliferation of predatory journals, the focus on peer review remains paramount for scientometricians and sociologists of science. Despite this attention, there is a notable scarcity of empirical investigations into the tangible impact of peer review on publication quality.

This study aims to address this gap by conducting a comprehensive analysis of how peer review contributes to the quality of scholarly publications, as measured by the citations they receive. Utilizing an adjusted dataset comprising 57,482 publications from Publons to Web of Science and employing the Raking Ratio method, our study reveals intriguing insights. Specifically, our findings shed light on a nuanced relationship between the length of reviewer reports and the subsequent citations received by publications.

Through a robust regression analysis, we establish that, beginning from 947 words, the length of reviewer reports is significantly associated with an increase in citations. These results not only confirm the initial hypothesis that longer reports indicate requested improvements, thereby enhancing the quality and visibility of articles, but also underscore the importance of timely and comprehensive reviewer reports.

Furthermore, insights from Publons’ data suggest that open access to reports can influence reviewer behavior, encouraging more detailed reports. Beyond the scholarly landscape, our findings prompt a reevaluation of the role of reviewers, emphasizing the need to recognize and value this resource-intensive yet underappreciated activity in institutional evaluations.

Additionally, the study sounds a cautionary note regarding the challenges faced by peer review in the context of an increasing volume of submissions, potentially compromising the vigilance of peers in swiftly assessing numerous articles.

HAL : https://cnrs.hal.science/hal-04492274

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EN

How open are hybrid journals included in transformative agreements?

Author : Najko Jahn

The ongoing controversy surrounding transformative agreements, which aim to transition journal publishing to full open access, highlight the need for large-scale studies assessing the uptake of open access in hybrid journals. This includes evaluating the extent to which transformative agreements enabled open access.

By combining publicly available data from various sources, including cOAlition S Journal Checker, Crossref, and OpenAlex, this study presents a novel approach that analyses over 700 agreements and nine million journal articles published in more than 11.000 hybrid journals. Estimates suggest a strong growth in open access between 2018 and 2022 from 4.3% to 15%. In 2022, 58% of hybrid open access was enabled by transformative agreements.

This trend was largely driven by the three commercial publishers Elsevier, Springer Nature, and Wiley, but the open access uptake varied substantially across journals, publishers, disciplines, and country affiliations. In particular, comparing the developments in the OECD and BRICS areas revealed different publication trends relative to hybrid open access.

In conclusion, estimates suggest that current levels of implementation of transformative agreements is insufficient to bring about a large-scale transition to full open access.

URL : How open are hybrid journals included in transformative agreements?

Arxiv : https://arxiv.org/abs/2402.18255