[2601.21908] The 'Big Three' of Scientific Information: A comparative bibliometric review of Web of Science, Scopus, and OpenAlex

Abstract:  The present comparative study examines the three main multidisciplinary bibliographic databases, Web of Science Core Collection, Scopus, and OpenAlex, with the aim of providing up-to-date evidence on coverage, metadata quality, and functional features to help inform strategic decisions in research assessment. The report is structured into two complementary methodological sections. First, it presents a systematic review of recent scholarly literature that investigates record volume, open-access coverage, linguistic diversity, reference coverage, and metadata quality; this is followed by an original bibliometric analysis of the 2015-2024 period that explores longitudinal distribution, document types, thematic profiles, linguistic differences, and overlap between databases. The text concludes with a ten-point executive summary and five recommendations.