Author object

When you use the API to get a single author or lists of authors, this is what's returned.

affiliations

List: List of objects, representing the affiliations this author has claimed in their publications. Each object in the list has two properties:

  • institution: a dehydrated Institution object

  • years: a list of the years in which this author claimed an affiliation with this institution

affiliations: [
    {
        institution: {
            id: "https://openalex.org/I201448701",
            ror: "https://ror.org/00cvxb145",
            ...
        },
        years: [2018, 2019, 2020]
    },
    {
        institution: {
            id: "https://openalex.org/I74973139",
            ror: "https://ror.org/05x2bcf33",
            ...
        },
        years: [2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019]
    }
]

cited_by_count

Integer: The total number 📄 Works that cite a work this author has created.

cited_by_count: 38

counts_by_year

List: Author.works_count and Author.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 works this author published, and how many times they got cited.

Any works or citations older than ten years old aren't included. Years with zero works and zero citations have been removed so you will need to add those in if you need them.

counts_by_year: [
    {
        year: 2022,
        works_count: 0,
        cited_by_count: 8
    },
    {
        year: 2021,
        works_count: 1,
        cited_by_count: 252
    },
    ...
    {
        year: 2012,
        works_count: 7,
        cited_by_count: 79
    }
]

created_date

String: The date this Author object was created in the OpenAlex dataset, expressed as an ISO 8601 date string.

created_date: "2017-08-08"

display_name

String: The name of the author as a single string.

display_name: "Jason Priem"

display_name_alternatives

List: Other ways that we've found this author's name displayed.

display_name_alternatives: [
    "Jason R Priem"
]

id

String: The OpenAlex ID for this author.

id: "https://openalex.org/A5023888391"

ids

Object: All the external identifiers that we know about for this author. IDs are expressed as URIs whenever possible. Possible ID types:

Most authors 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/A5023888391",
    orcid: "https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6187-6610",
    scopus: "http://www.scopus.com/inward/authorDetails.url?authorID=36455008000&partnerID=MN8TOARS",
},

last_known_institution (deprecated)

This field has been deprecated. Its replacement is last_known_institutions.

last_known_institutions

List: List of Institution objects. This author's last known institutional affiliations. In this context "last known" means that we took all the author's Works, sorted them by publication date, and selected the most recent one. If there is only one affiliated institution for this author for the work, this will be a list of length 1; if there are multiple affiliations, they will all be included in the list.

Each item in the list is a dehydrated Institution object, and you can find more documentation on the Institution page.

last_known_institutions: [{
    id: "https://openalex.org/I4200000001",
    ror: "https://ror.org/02nr0ka47",
    display_name: "OurResearch",
    country_code: "CA",
    type: "nonprofit",
    lineage: ["https://openalex.org/I4200000001"]
}],

orcid

String: The ORCID ID for this author. ORCID is a global and unique ID for authors. This is the Canonical external ID for authors.

Compared to other Canonical IDs, ORCID coverage is relatively low in OpenAlex, because ORCID adoption in the wild has been slow compared with DOI, for example. This is particularly an issue when dealing with older works and authors.

orcid: "https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6187-6610"

summary_stats

Object: Citation metrics for this author

  • 2yr_mean_citedness Float: The 2-year mean citedness for this source. Also known as impact factor. We use the year prior to the current year for the citations (the numerator) and the two years prior to that for the citation-receiving publications (the denominator).

  • h_index Integer: The h-index for this author.

  • i10_index Integer: The i-10 index for this author.

While the 2-year mean citedness is normally a journal-level metric, it can be calculated for any set of papers, so we include it for authors.

summary_stats: {
    2yr_mean_citedness: 1.5295340589458237,
    h_index: 45,
    i10_index: 205
}

updated_date

String: The last time anything in this author 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"

works_api_url

String: A URL that will get you a list of all this author's works.

We express this as an API URL (instead of just listing the works themselves) because sometimes an author's publication list is too long to reasonably fit into a single author object.

works_api_url: "https://api.openalex.org/works?filter=author.id:A5023888391",

works_count

Integer: The number of 📄 Works this this author has created.

works_count: 38

This is updated a couple times per day. So the count may be slightly different than what's in works when viewed like this.

x_concepts

x_concepts will be deprecated and removed soon. We will be replacing this functionality with Topics instead.

List: The concepts most frequently applied to works created by this author. Each is represented as a dehydrated Concept object, with one additional attribute:

  • score (Float): The strength of association between this author and the listed concept, from 0-100.

x_concepts: [
    {
        id: "https://openalex.org/C41008148",
        wikidata: null,
        display_name: "Computer science",
        level: 0,
        score: 97.4
    },
    {
        id: "https://openalex.org/C17744445",
        wikidata: null,
        display_name: "Political science",
        level: 0,
        score: 78.9
    }
]

The DehydratedAuthor object

The DehydratedAuthor is stripped-down Author object, with most of its properties removed to save weight. Its only remaining properties are:

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