Abstract Clarivate's Web of Science (WoS) and Elsevier's Scopus have been for decades the main sources of bibliometric information. Although highly curated, these closed, proprietary databases are largely biased toward English‐language publications, underestimating the use of other languages in research dissemination. Launched in 2022, OpenAlex promised comprehensive, inclusive, and open‐source research information. While already in use by scholars and research institutions, the quality of its metadata is currently still being assessed. This paper contributes to this literature by assessing the completeness and accuracy of OpenAlex's metadata related to language, through a comparison with WoS, as well as an in‐depth manual validation of a sample of 6836 articles. Results show that OpenAlex exhibits a far more balanced linguistic coverage than WoS. However, language metadata are not always accurate, which leads OpenAlex to overestimate the place of English while underestimating that of other languages. If used critically, OpenAlex can provide comprehensive and representative analyses of languages used for scholarly publishing, but more work is needed at infrastructural level to ensure the quality of metadata on language.

Abstract The Latin‐American scientific community has achieved significant progress towards gender parity, with nearly equal representation of women and men scientists. Nevertheless, women continue to be underrepresented in scholarly communication. Throughout the 20th century, Latin America established its academic circuit, focusing on research topics of regional significance. Through an analysis of scientific publications, this article explores the relationship between gender inequalities in science and the integration of Latin‐American researchers into the regional and global academic circuits between 1993 and 2022. We find that women are more likely to engage in the regional circuit, while men are more active within the global circuit. This trend is attributed to a thematic alignment between women's research interests and issues specific to Latin America. Furthermore, our results reveal that the mechanisms contributing to gender differences in symbolic capital accumulation vary between circuits. Women's work achieves equal or greater recognition compared to men's within the regional circuit, but generally garners less attention in the global circuit. Our findings suggest that policies aimed at strengthening the regional academic circuit would encourage scientists to address locally relevant topics while simultaneously fostering gender equality in science.

Abstract Empirical evidence demonstrates that citations received by scholarly publications follow a pattern of preferential attachment, resulting in a power‐law distribution. Such asymmetry has sparked significant debate regarding the use of citations for research evaluation. However, a consensus has yet to be established concerning the historical trends in citation concentration. Are citations becoming more concentrated in a small number of articles? Or have recent geopolitical and technical changes in science led to more decentralized distributions? This ongoing debate stems from a lack of technical clarity in measuring inequality. Given the variations in citation practices across disciplines and over time, it is crucial to account for multiple factors that can influence the findings. This article explores how reference‐based and citation‐based approaches, uncited articles, citation inflation, the expansion of bibliometric databases, disciplinary differences, and self‐citations affect the evolution of citation concentration. Our results indicate a decreasing trend in citation concentration, primarily driven by a decline in uncited articles, which, in turn, can be attributed to the growing significance of Asia and Europe. On the whole, our findings clarify current debates on citation concentration and show that, contrary to a widely‐held belief, citations are increasingly scattered.

Abstract The production of research and faculty in the US higher education system is concentrated within a few institutions. Concentration of research and resources affects minoritized scholars and the topics with which they are disproportionately associated. This paper examines topical alignment between institutions and authors of varying intersectional identities, and the relationship between research topics and identities with institutional prestige and scientific impact. Our results show statistically significant differences between minoritized scholars and White men in citations and journal impact. The aggregate research profile of prestigious US universities is highly correlated with the research profile of White men, and negatively correlated with the research profile of minoritized women. Furthermore, authors affiliated with more prestigious institutions are associated with increasing inequalities in both citations and journal impact. These results suggest a relationship—which we coin as the Howard‐Harvard effect—in which the topical profile of minoritized scholars is further marginalized in prestigious institutions as compared to mission‐driven institutions. Academic institutions and funders should create policies to mitigate the systemic barriers that prevent the United States from achieving a fully robust scientific ecosystem.