The ‘Big Three’ of Scientific Information: A comparative bibliometric review of Web of Science, Scopus, and OpenAlex

https://microblogging.infodocs.eu/2026/01/30/the-big-three-of-scientific-information-a-comparative-bibliometric-review-of-web-of-science-scopus-and-openalex/

#BibliographicDatabases #BibliometricAnalysis #DanielTorresSalinas #OpenAlex #ScientificInformation #Scopus #WebOfScience #WenceslaoArroyoMachado

Yet Another Elsevier Scandal

I wish to draw your attention to an article in the Spanish newspaper El Pais. I encourage you to read the full article, which in English here, and the headline is this:

The article is about a very dodgy journal called Science of the Total Environment published by Elsevier. As far as I can tell, despite the scandal, this journal is still listed in Scopus which is meant to mean that it is a quality journal. One shouldn’t be surprised however, because Scopus is itself owned by Elsevier. Why anyone would trust Scopus for anything is completely beyond me.

As well as the huge revenues and profit margins revealed in the article, it also mentions that Erik Engstrom, CEO of RELX (the multinational that owns Elsevier), earned more than €15 million ($17.4 million) in 2024 between his salary and other compensation. Nice work if you can get it…

Here’s a quote:

The scandal exposes the windfall profits of scientific publishers, who in recent years have amassed billions of dollars in earnings from public funds earmarked for science.

Quite so. I’ve been saying as much for years, in fact, and it is the major reason for setting up the Open Journal of Astrophysics. In my opinion, however, the scandalous behaviour of publishers is only half the problem: equally to blame are the institutions that go along with it.

#elsevier #journalOfTheTotalEnvironment #openAccessPublishing #scopus

More AI garbage

I’m indebted to a post on Mastodon for drawing my attention to a blog post about a paper with the title Bridging the gap: explainable ai for autism diagnosis and parental support with TabPFNMix and SHAP that appeared in the journal Nature Scientific Reports (which claims to be peer-reviewed).

Here is Figure 1 of that paper:

I’m no expert on Autism Diagnosis, but I’m pretty sure that neither “Fexcectorn” nor “frymblal” (medical or otherwise) nor “runctitional” are words in the English language. Why do the person’s legs go through the table? And why is Autism represented by a bicycle? This nonsensical figure was clearly generated by AI, as is much of the text of the paper. How on Earth did this crap pass peer review?

Still, Nature Scientific Reports is index in Scopus, which we all know is a watertight guarantee of quality…

P.S. The article was published on 19th November 2025. It is now prefaced by an Editor’s Note: “Readers are alerted that the contents of this paper are subject to criticisms that are being considered by editors. A further editorial response will follow the resolution of these issues.”

#autism #genai #natureScientificReports #scopus