When Is a Year Complete? · OpenISU

Scholarly metadata takes time to get into databases. How long do I need to wait before the records from a completed calendar year are available in bibliographic databases? When do December 2022 papers reliably show up in databases in 2023? I have typically waited until the following September before looking at the most recent year, but is that enough?

To collect actual data on record availability, I set up an automated API call in February 2022. Every day for the past 18 months, the program has launched at 9:00am (assuming my computer is turned on and plugged in) and collects the number of 2022 ISU publications in Web of Science, Dimensions, and OpenAlex.  The program records the data, saves it, and updates the plot.