Do OpenCitations and Dimensions serve as an alternative to Web of Science for calculating disruption indexes?

Shuo Xu, Congcong Wang, Xin An, Yunkang Deng and Jianhua Liu

Journal of Informetrics, 2025, vol. 19, issue 3

Abstract: As open access repositories become more prevalent worldwide, scholarly interests in comparative analysis of bibliographic databases are on the rise. Despite this, there is a remarkable scarcity of empirical studies evaluating the efficacy of open and restricted access databases as viable alternatives to traditional closed access models. This study employs the Disruption Index (DI) to analyze three bibliographic databases (WoS, Dimensions, and OpenCitations) across four research fields: Synthetic Biology, Astronomy & Astrophysics as established fields, and Blockchain-based Information System Management and Socio-Economic Impacts of Biological Invasions as emerging ones. After extensive experiments, three main findings are observed as follows. (1) The articles with higher citation counts typically exhibit higher DI values across all fields. (2) The WoS and Dimensions consistently demonstrate closer alignment across established and emerging fields. More missing citations in the OpenCitations lead to significant deviations from the WoS in term of DI values. (3) Compared to the OpenCitations, the Dimensions emerges as a superior alternative to the WoS to some extent.

Keywords: Open access; Web of Science (WoS); Dimensions; OpenCitations; Disruption index (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:infome:v:19:y:2025:i:3:s1751157725000495

DOI: 10.1016/j.joi.2025.101685

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