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Overview
OpenAlex is a fully open catalog of the global research system. It's named after the ancient Library of Alexandria and made by the nonprofit OurResearch.
This is the technical documentation for the OpenAlex API. Here, you can learn how to set up your code to access OpenAlex's data. If you want to explore the data as a human, you may be more interested in OpenAlex Web. This web interface is currently in the alpha stage of development, with a beta launch coming soon (sign up here to be notified when the launch happens!).
The OpenAlex dataset describes scholarly entities and how those entities are connected to each other. Types of entities include works, authors, sources, institutions, concepts, publishers, and funders.
Together, these make a huge web (or more technically, heterogeneous directed graph) of hundreds of millions of entities and billions of connections between them all.
The API is the primary way to get OpenAlex data. It's free and requires no authentication. The daily limit for API calls is 100,000 requests per user per day. For best performance, add your email to all API requests, like
[email protected]. Learn moreThere is also a complete database snapshot available to download. Learn more about the data snapshot here.
The API has a limit of 100,000 calls per day, and the snapshot is updated monthly. If you need a higher limit, or more frequent updates, please look into OpenAlex Premium.
The web interface for OpenAlex is currently in development, with a beta launch coming in late 2023. Sign up to be notified about the launch here.
OpenAlex offers an open replacement for industry-standard scientific knowledge bases like Elsevier's Scopus and Clarivate's Web of Science. Compared to these paywalled services, OpenAlex offers significant advantages in terms of inclusivity, affordability, and avaliability.
OpenAlex is:
- Big — We have about twice the coverage of the other services, and have significantly better coverage of non-English works and works from the Global South.
- Easy — Our service is fast, modern, and well-documented.
- Open — Our complete dataset is free under the CC0 license, which allows for transparency and reuse.
Many people and organizations have already found great value using OpenAlex. Have a look at the Testimonials to hear what they've said!
For tech support and bug reports, please visit our help page. You can also join the OpenAlex user group, and follow us on Twitter (@OpenAlex_org) and Mastodon.
Priem, J., Piwowar, H., & Orr, R. (2022). OpenAlex: A fully-open index of scholarly works, authors, venues, institutions, and concepts. ArXiv. https://arxiv.org/abs/2205.01833
Last modified 3mo ago