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Assess whether non-DOI publications excluded from Dimensions exhibit different Open Access advantages

Determine whether research publications lacking Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs) and therefore excluded from the Dimensions dataset exhibit different Open Access Citation Advantages (OACA) and Open Access Altmetrics Advantages (OAAA) compared to DOI-assigned publications included in Dimensions, potentially reflecting differences by geography, language, or discipline.

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Background

The paper analyzes 38.7 million journal articles from the Dimensions database, which indexes publications primarily via Crossref metadata and requires DOIs for inclusion. As a consequence, research published without DOIs is excluded from the analyzed corpus, and the authors note this exclusion may be uneven across geography, language, and discipline.

The paper defines Open Access advantages as OA-to-non-OA ratios for citations (OACA) and for several altmetric indicators (OAAA). Since non-DOI research is absent from the dataset, it remains unknown whether such excluded publications would show different OACA and OAAA patterns than those observed for DOI-assigned publications included in Dimensions.

References

Firstly, it is likely that the distribution of research published in journals that haven't been assigned a DOI - and thus not in Dimensions - is not evenly spread by either geography, language or discipline. However, this excluded research is unlikely to be either highly-cited or otherwise impactful, but it is not known whether it has different OACA or OAAA relationships.

— Evaluating Open Access Advantages for Citations and Altmetrics (2011-21): A Dynamic and Evolving Relationship (2406.10535 - Taylor, 15 Jun 2024) in Discussion, first paragraph (page 34)