Venue

OpenAlex documentation
Search…
Welcome!
API
📚
Venue
Venues are where works are hosted.
OpenAlex indexes about 124,000 venues. There are several types, including journals, conferences, preprint repositories, and institutional repositories. The Canonical External ID for venues is ISSN-L, which is a special "main" ISSN assigned to every venue (venues tend to have multiple ISSNs). About 90% of venues in OpenAlex have an ISSN-L or ISSN.
Our information about venues comes from Crossref, the ISSN Network, and MAG. These datasets are joined automatically where possible, but there’s also a lot of manual curation involved.
Several venues may host the same work. OpenAlex reports both the primary host venue (generally wherever the version of record lives), and alternate host venues (like preprint repositories).
Venues are linked to works via the works.host_venue and works.alternate_host_venues properties.
The Venue object
id
String: The OpenAlex ID for this venue.
id: "https://openalex.org/V1983995261"
issn_l
String: The ISSN-L identifying this venue. This is the Canonical External ID for venues.
ISSN is a global and unique ID for serial publications. However, different media versions of a given publication (e.g., print and electronic) often have different ISSNs. This is why we can't have nice things. The ISSN-L or Linking ISSN solves the problem by designating a single canonical ISSN for all media versions of the title. It's usually the same as the print ISSN.
issn_l: "2167-8359"
issn
List: The ISSNs used by this venue. Many publications have multiple ISSNs (see above), so ISSN-L should be used when possible.
issn:["2167-8359"]
display_name
String: The name of the venue.
display_name: "PeerJ"
publisher
String: The name of this venue's publisher. Publisher is a tricky category, as journals often change publishers, publishers merge, publishers have subsidiaries ("imprints"), and of course no one is consistent in their naming. In the future, we plan to roll out support for a more structured publisher field, but for now it's just a string.
publisher: "Peerj"
works_count
Integer: The number of Works this this venue hosts.
works_count: 20184 
cited_by_count
Integer: The total number of Works that cite a Work hosted in this venue.
cited_by_count: 133702 
is_oa
Boolean: Whether this is currently fully-open-access venue. This could be true for a preprint repository where everything uploaded is free to read, or for a Gold or Diamond open access journal, where all newly published Works are available for free under an open license.
We say "currently" because the status of a Venue can change over time. It's common for journals to "flip" to Gold OA, after which they may make only future articles open or also open their back catalogs. It's entirely possible for a Venue to say is_oa: true, but for an article from last year to require a subscription.
is_oa: true 
is_in_doaj
Boolean: Whether this is a journal listed in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ).  
is_in_doaj: true 
homepage_url
String: The starting page for navigating the contents of this venue; the homepage for this venue's website.
homepage_url: "http://www.peerj.com/" 
ids
Object: All the external identifiers that we know about for this venue. IDs are expressed as URIs whenever possible. Possible ID types:
openalex (String: this venue's OpenAlex ID. Same as Venue.id)
issn_l (String: this venue's ISSN-L. Same as Venue.issn_l)
mag  (Integer: this venue's Microsoft Academic Graph ID)
issn (List: a list of this venue's ISSNs. Same as Venue.issn)
Many venues are missing one or more ID types (either because we don't know the ID, or because it was never assigned). Keys for null IDs are not displayed.
ids: {
    openalex: "https://openalex.org/V1983995261",
    issn_l: "2167-8359",
    issn: [
        "2167-8359"
    ],
    mag: 1983995261
}
x_concepts
The "x" in x_concepts is because it's experimental and subject to removal with very little warning. We plan to replace it with a custom link to the Concepts API endpoint. 
List: The Concepts most frequently applied to works hosted by this venue. Each is represented as a dehydrated Concept object, with one additional attribute:
score (Float): The strength of association between this venue and the listed concept, from 0-100.
x_concepts: [
    {
        id: "https://openalex.org/C86803240",
        wikidata: null,
        display_name: "Biology",
        level: 0,
        score: 86.7
    },
    {
        id: "https://openalex.org/C185592680",
        wikidata: null,
        display_name: "Chemistry",
        level: 0,
        score: 51.4
    },
    
    // and so forth
]
counts_by_year
List: works_count and cited_by_count for each of the last ten years, binned by year. To put it another way: each year, you can see how many new works this venue started hosting, and how many times any work in this venue got cited.
If the venue was founded less than ten years ago, there will naturally be fewer than ten years in this list. Years with zero citations and zero works have been removed so you will need to add those  in if you need them.
counts_by_year: [
    {
        year: 2021,
        works_count: 4338,
        cited_by_count: 127268
    },
    {
        year: 2020,
        works_count: 4363,
        cited_by_count: 119531
    },
    
    // and so forth
]
​
works_api_url
String: A URL that will get you a list of all this venue's Works.
We express this as an API URL (instead of just listing the works themselves) because sometimes a venue's publication list is too long to reasonably fit into a single Venue object.
works_api_url: "https://api.openalex.org/works?filter=host_venue.id:V1983995261",
​
updated_date
String: The last time anything in this Venue object changed, expressed as an ISO 8601 date string. This date is updated for any change at all, including increases in various counts.
updated_date: "2022-01-02T00:00:00"
created_date
String: The date this Venue object was created in the OpenAlex dataset, expressed as an ISO 8601 date string. 
created_date: "2017-08-08"
The DehydratedVenue object
The DehydratedVenue is stripped-down Venue object, with most of its properties removed to save weight. Its only remaining properties are:
​id​
​issn_l​
​issn​
​display_name​
​publisher​
Author
Institution
Last modified 1mo ago
Copy link
On this page
The Venue object
issn_l
issn
display_name
publisher
works_count
cited_by_count
is_oa
is_in_doaj
homepage_url
ids
x_concepts
counts_by_year
works_api_url
updated_date
created_date
The DehydratedVenue object
The `Venue` object

`id`

`issn_l`

`issn`

`display_name`

`publisher`

`works_count`

`cited_by_count`

`is_oa`

`is_in_doaj`

`homepage_url`

`ids`

`x_concepts`

`counts_by_year`

`works_api_url`

`updated_date`

`created_date`

The `DehydratedVenue` object
