This repository contains code and data querying the OpenAlex and Crossref APIs to check for presence of African Journals Online (AJOL) journals in OpenAlex and Crossref by ISSN.
The current check was done on February 13, 2022.
ISSNs were retrieved for 532 of 545 journals from the AJOL website. Of these, 466 journals were found in Crossref, and 464 in OpenAlex. All titles retrieved from OpenAlex were also present in Crossref.
The two AJOL journals in Crossref, but not found by ISSN in OpenAlex are Caliphate Journal of Science and Technology and South Sudan Medical Journal.
Of the 464 titles present in Crossref and OpenAlex, OpenAlex has more records than Crossref for 243 titles, while Crossref has more records for 105 titles.
Scripts:
00_AJOL_journals.R
01_AJOL_OpenAlex.R
02_AJOL_Crossref.R
03_AJOL_analyze.R
Resulting dataset:
AJOL_OpenAlex_Crossref_2022-02-13.csv
Limitations / next steps:
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Two journals (South African Family Practice (SAFP) and South African Journal of Clinical Nutrition (SAJCN) have the same ISSN/eISSN. Both ISSNs resolve to SAFP in OpenAlex and Crossref. Currently, this is not corrected in the dataset, which therefore contains duplicate data for SAFP and SAJCN.
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A small number of ISSNs retrieved from the AJOL website (4 out of 665 unique ISSNs) were found to contain typos/errors (e.g. additional or missing digits). No API results were returned for these ISSNs.
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No additional information was collected on e.g. type of publication or publication year to investigate differences in record count in OpenAlex and Crossref for journals included in both.
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It was not checked whether OpenAlex includes additional AJOL journal titles when searched not by ISSN, but e.g. by journal name.
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OpenAlex is actively improving the quality of its coverage. OpenAlex metadata (included in AJOL_OpenAlex_2022-02-13.csv) show that 191 of the 464 AJOL journals found in OpenAlex have been added as 'Venues' on February 3, 2022.