A couple of years ago now – a free, openly-available bibliographic search tool called OpenAlex came onto the scholarly research scene and was quickly embraced by researchers worldwide who were upset by the news of Microsoft’s decision to discontinue Microsoft Academic Graph (MAG) at the end of 2021.
Find out more about OpenAlex by reviewing these resources:
- Chawla DS. Microsoft Academic Graph is being discontinued. What’s next? Nature Index. 2021.
- Singh Chawla D. Massive open index of scholarly papers launches. Nature. 2022. Epub 20220124. doi: 10.1038/d41586-022-00138-y. PubMed PMID: 35075274.
- Priem J, Piwowar H, Orr R. OpenAlex: A fully-open index of scholarly works, authors, venues, institutions, and concepts 2022. doi: 10.48550/arxiv.2205.01833.
- OpenAlex Help Center – https://help.openalex.org/
Since 2022, OpenAlex has become harder and harder to ignore. In 2024, there’s been several papers exploring its usefulness in bibliometrics and how it compares to its proprietary/commercial competitors, Scopus (Elsevier) and Web of Science (Clarivate).
For example:
- Alperin JP, Portenoy J, Demes K, Larivière V, Haustein S. An analysis of the suitability of OpenAlex for bibliometric analyses. 2024. doi: 10.48550/arxiv.2404.17663.
- Culbert J, Hobert A, Jahn N, Haupka N, Schmidt M, Donner P, Mayr P. Reference Coverage Analysis of OpenAlex compared to Web of Science and Scopus. arXivorg. 2024. doi: 10.48550/arxiv.2401.16359.
- Haunschild R, Bornmann L. Usage of OpenAlex for creating meaningful global overlay maps of science on the individual and institutional levels. 2024. doi: 10.48550/arxiv.2404.02732.
Interestingly, however, researchers are also beginning to explore its usefulness in systematic review literature searching methodology. Most notably, a free systematic review project management tool called EPPI-Reviewer “has integrated access to over 200 million OA bibliographic records of research articles, connected in a large network graph of concept & citation relationships: the OpenAlex dataset – updated regularly. See here for further information.” (From: https://eppi.ioe.ac.uk/cms/Default.aspx?alias=eppi.ioe.ac.uk/cms/er4; EPPI-Reviewer is developed and maintained by the EPPI Centre – the Evidence for Policy and Practice Information and Co-ordinating Centre (EPPI Centre) – which is part of the Social Science Research Unit at the Institute of Education, University of London.)
Not surprisingly, published systematic reviews that include OpenAlex as one of the sources searched are slowly beginning to appear. For example:
- Ferreira Aderaldo J, da Silva Maranhão K, Ferreira Lanza DC. Does microfluidic sperm selection improve clinical pregnancy and miscarriage outcomes in assisted reproductive treatments? A systematic review and meta-analysis. PloS one. 2023;18(11):e0292891-e. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0292891.
- Ames H, Hestevik CH, Briggs AM. Acceptability, values, and preferences of older people for chronic low back pain management; a qualitative evidence synthesis. BMC Geriatrics. 2024;24(1):24. doi: 10.1186/s12877-023-04608-4.
- Harder R. Using Scopus and OpenAlex APIs to retrieve bibliographic data for evidence synthesis. A procedure based on Bash and SQL. MethodsX. 2024;12:102601. Epub 20240203. doi: 10.1016/j.mex.2024.102601. PubMed PMID: 38361986; PMCID: PMC10867663.
The MSK Library’s Systematic Review Service team keeps on top of new resources being used by authors across the globe – like OpenAlex – and other potentially relevant changes in evidence synthesis practice. Feel free to Ask Us whenever you come across a database or web resource that is unfamiliar to you when reading a systematic review!