Search institutions

The best way to search for institutions is to use the search query parameter, which searches the display_name, the display_name_alternatives, and the display_name_acronyms. Example:

• Search institutions for San Diego State University: https://api.openalex.org/institutions?search=san diego state university

You can read more about search here. It will show you how relevance score is calculated, how words are stemmed to improve search results, and how to do complex boolean searches.

Search a specific field

You can also use search as a filter, allowing you to fine-tune the fields you're searching over. To do this, you append .search to the end of the property you are filtering for:

• Get institutions with "florida" in the display_name: https://api.openalex.org/institutions?filter=display_name.search:florida

The following field can be searched as a filter within institutions:

Search filter	Field that is searched
display_name.search	display_name

You can also use the filter default.search, which works the same as using the search parameter.

Autocomplete institutions

You can autocomplete institutions to create a very fast type-ahead style search function:

• Autocomplete institutions with "harv" in the display_name: https://api.openalex.org/autocomplete/institutions?q=harv

This returns a list of institutions with the institution location set as the hint:

{ 
  "results": [
    {
        "id": "https://openalex.org/I136199984",
        "display_name": "Harvard University",
        "hint": "Cambridge, USA",
        "cited_by_count": 37792327,
        "works_count": 242547,
        "entity_type": "institution",
        "external_id": "https://ror.org/03vek6s52"
    },
    ...
  ]
}

Read more in the autocomplete page in the API guide.