Blogpost comparing abstract coverage in Crossref and OpenAlex

[Bianca Kramer]

Dear all,

I'd like to share with the list a blogpost I wrote on the coverage of abstracts in Crossref and OpenAlex.

The blogpost discusses the availability of open abstracts in both systems, in light of the increasing importance of abstracts given the rise of large language models (LLM) and generative AI, and the recent takedown of abstracts for non-OA articles from OpenAlex by Elsevier, following an similar move by Springer Nature a while ago. 

https://bmkramer.github.io/SesameOpenScience_site/thought/202411_open_abstracts/

I hope this will be of interest to members of this list. Comments and discussion are very welcome! 

kind regards,
Bianca Kramer

Sesame Open Science

[Laura Bredahl]

Thanks for sharing this Bianca. Can you explain why the take downs are important for those who don't quite get it (that's me if you are wondering), or at least point us in the right direction to another post somewhere?

Best,

Laura Bredahl

Bibiliometrics and Research Impact Librarian

UWaterloo

[Bianca Kramer]

Hi Laura,

Thanks for asking! The website of the Initiative for Open Abstracts (I4OA) has a concise description on the use of abstracts and the importance of openness of abstracts: https://i4oa.org/#openabstracts.
There is also a longer blogpost here: https://www.leidenmadtrics.nl/articles/why-openly-available-abstracts-are-important-overview-of-the-current-state-of-affairs

Since then, the use of scientific abstracts in training data for LLM has also emerged as an important use case.

But also, if you are using OpenAlex (and other bibliographic databases) to search for literature, abstracts are one of the fields that are useful to search, and OpenAlex by default searches in title, abstract and fulltext (where available). So taking down abstracts (especially for closed articles!) can affect the quality of your search and the results you get. 

Hope this helps, let me know if you want to know more! 

kind regards, Bianca 

Op do 28 nov 2024 om 15:14 schreef Laura Bredahl <laura....@gmail.com>:

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[Aaron Tay (Aaron Tay)]

Hi Bianca

Great work as usual. A bit off-topic but do you know if Semantic Scholar is subject to similar takedowns from Elsevier and Springer as OpenAlex? I am noticing AI search tools like Elicit, Undermind etc that use Semantic Scholar corpus starting to put notices saying they cant display these abstracts due to request from content owner.

[Bianca Kramer]

Hi Aaron, 

Not off topic at all! I was not aware of this, and it's very interesting if this is indeed a broader push. 
Do you (or someone else) know if these notices are limited to certain publishers, or more across the board? 

kind regards, Bianca

Op vr 29 nov 2024 om 14:28 schreef Aaron Tay (Aaron Tay) <aaro...@gmail.com>:

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[Aaron Tay]

Hi Bianca

So far, I have seen only issues with Springer and Elsevier. Not sure about the rest

E.g. Developers of tools like Undermind (which uses Semantic Scholar) say (see this part of recording) "okay the issue we do have a problem with like some of these actually because it's Springer. I noticed as well right there's some weird thing with Springer where there's like we are missing the abstracts of some of the Springer journals because of some weird publishing thing. Elicit I noticed in Aug had issues with Elsevier

I only read about the issue with OpenAlex recently,but seems connected. 

Regards

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