Misattribution of citations to book reviews instead of books

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Gabor Schubert

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Nov 12, 2025, 8:45:10 AMNov 12
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Hi,

I found some highly cited book reviews where the citing publications were most probably incorrectly assigned to the book reviews instead of the books they were reviewing. For example:

https://openalex.org/w2619303372

"Against Purity: Living Ethically in Compromised Times" a book by Alexis Shotwell from 2016 which received 205 citations according to OpenAlex.

https://openalex.org/w2947346696

A book review from 2017 about Alexis Shotwell's book in the journal Disability & Society by Claudia Gillberg, which received 623(!) citations according to OpenAlex.

It is highly unlikely that a book review receives that many citations, I think it is quite rare that they receive any citations at all. This book review has never received any citations according to Crossref (https://api.crossref.org/works/10.1080/09687599.2017.1372946), and most probably all of the 623 citations in OpenAlex cited the original book by Shotwell not the review (I checked a few manually and it was always the case).

I did a test for ca 3000 book reviews from Sweden which had DOI registered, from the period of 2015-2024, using data from the Swepub database, where book reviews are categorized as a separate publication type.

I found that the majority of these have 0 citations in OpenAlex, but about 5-10% of them have received many citations (more than 10) according to OpenAlex, although no citations or only a few according to Crossref. I also checked a few Crossref citations manually to these book reviews, and I have a feeling that many times even these are "false references" when authors cite the book review instead of the book (but of course this is another type of error).

Here is a list of the most prominent cases. Book reviews which have received many citations in OpenAlex, but virtually no citations in Crossref:

https://openalex.org/W2282634802 (https://doi.org/10.1080/09515089.2015.1095872): 392 citations in OpenAlex, 0 citations in Crossref
https://openalex.org/W2516827048 (https://doi.org/10.1111/padm.12278): 238 citations in OpenAlex, 6 citations in Crossref
https://openalex.org/W3171768595 (https://doi.org/10.1080/19460171.2021.1936105): 143 citations in OpenAlex, 0 citations in Crossref
https://openalex.org/W2656816249 (https://doi.org/10.1080/17405904.2017.1342679): 142 citations in OpenAlex, 0 citations in Crossref
https://openalex.org/W3010815124 (https://doi.org/10.1080/08865655.2020.1735482): 139 citations in OpenAlex, 0 citations in Crossref
https://openalex.org/W4249264140 (https://doi.org/10.1093/aesthj/ayab061): 138 citations in OpenAlex, 0 citations in Crossref
https://openalex.org/W1724541845 (https://doi.org/10.1080/01402382.2015.1065068): 135 citations in OpenAlex, 0 citations in Crossref
https://openalex.org/W3135801560 (https://doi.org/10.1080/18626033.2020.1886530): 130 citations in OpenAlex, 0 citations in Crossref
https://openalex.org/W2792575311 (https://doi.org/10.1080/21647259.2018.1449189): 118 citations in OpenAlex, 0 citations in Crossref
https://openalex.org/W3202713729 (https://doi.org/10.1080/21670811.2021.1983727): 117 citations in OpenAlex, 1 citations in Crossref
https://openalex.org/W2307663916 (https://doi.org/10.1177/0094306115599351g): 107 citations in OpenAlex, 3 citations in Crossref
https://openalex.org/W2545203629 (https://doi.org/10.1080/09668136.2016.1230410): 102 citations in OpenAlex, 0 citations in Crossref
https://openalex.org/W1620539836 (https://doi.org/10.1080/21670811.2015.1087733): 101 citations in OpenAlex, 1 citations in Crossref
https://openalex.org/W1974185330 (https://doi.org/10.1111/padm.12146): 98 citations in OpenAlex, 0 citations in Crossref
https://openalex.org/W3157103174 (https://doi.org/10.1080/13537903.2021.1873597): 90 citations in OpenAlex, 0 citations in Crossref
https://openalex.org/W2253742128 (https://doi.org/10.1093/cdj/bsv028): 86 citations in OpenAlex, 0 citations in Crossref
https://openalex.org/W2501631482 (https://doi.org/10.1080/01402382.2016.1215453): 85 citations in OpenAlex, 0 citations in Crossref
https://openalex.org/W2070100237 (https://doi.org/10.1080/01402382.2014.962828): 83 citations in OpenAlex, 0 citations in Crossref
https://openalex.org/W2671385905 (https://doi.org/10.1080/01576895.2017.1330595): 79 citations in OpenAlex, 0 citations in Crossref
https://openalex.org/W3015199088 (https://doi.org/10.37062/sf.57.21542): 76 citations in OpenAlex, 0 citations in Crossref
https://openalex.org/W2037754876 (https://doi.org/10.1080/13537903.2015.987010): 73 citations in OpenAlex, 0 citations in Crossref
https://openalex.org/W2604957389 (https://doi.org/10.1080/13549839.2017.1306499): 73 citations in OpenAlex, 3 citations in Crossref
https://openalex.org/W2915126956 (https://doi.org/10.1080/09687599.2019.1574084): 72 citations in OpenAlex, 0 citations in Crossref
https://openalex.org/W3170787526 (https://doi.org/10.37062/sf.58.22410): 66 citations in OpenAlex, 0 citations in Crossref
https://openalex.org/W2216983097 (https://doi.org/10.1080/14794802.2015.1092392): 64 citations in OpenAlex, 2 citations in Crossref
https://openalex.org/W3107192191 (https://doi.org/10.1080/03122417.2020.1837053): 57 citations in OpenAlex, 0 citations in Crossref
https://openalex.org/W2803411643 (https://doi.org/10.1093/joc/jqy021): 54 citations in OpenAlex, 0 citations in Crossref
https://openalex.org/W2613860363 (https://doi.org/10.1080/15022250.2017.1322532): 53 citations in OpenAlex, 0 citations in Crossref
https://openalex.org/W2905624715 (https://doi.org/10.1080/10848770.2018.1558845): 53 citations in OpenAlex, 0 citations in Crossref
https://openalex.org/W4313432596 (https://doi.org/10.1080/03585522.2022.2154834): 52 citations in OpenAlex, 1 citations in Crossref

Gabor Schubert,
Stockholm University
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