OpenAlex Works Scraper — Papers, Citations & Authors

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🎯 What this scrapes

OpenAlex replaced Microsoft Academic Graph as the open citation index, and it is the only free source that covers authors, institutions and citation counts in one record. The API is generous but its records nest authorships, locations and open-access blocks several levels deep. This Actor flattens each work into one row with the author and institution lists already joined, so a literature landscape or a citation report lands straight in a spreadsheet.

🔥 What we handle for you

walks OpenAlex's cursor paging so there is no 10 000-record ceiling flattens nested authorship and open-access blocks into one row per work retries transient 429/5xx responses instead of failing the whole run

💡 Use cases

• Build a literature landscape for a research area with citation counts attached.
• Find which institutions publish most in a field before a partnership or hiring decision.
• Track a competitor lab's output and how often it gets cited.
• Assemble an open-access-only reading list you can actually download.

⚙️ How to use it

1. Click Try for free at the top of the page.
2. Fill in the input form — most fields have sensible defaults.
3. Click Start. Output streams into the run's dataset.
4. Export from Storage → Dataset as JSON, CSV, or Excel — or fetch via the API.

📥 Input

Field	Type	Required	Default	Notes
searchQuery	string	no	'large language models'	Full-text search across titles, abstracts and fulltext. Leave empty if you are filtering only.
fromPublicationDate	string	no	'2025-01-01'	Only works published on or after this date, as YYYY-MM-DD. Leave empty for no floor.
openAccessOnly	boolean	no	False	Restrict results to works with a free full text.
minCitations	integer	no	0	Only works cited at least this many times. Leave at 0 for no floor.
maxResults	integer	no	100	Stop after this many works. Each work is one billed result row.
proxyConfiguration	object	no	{'useApifyProxy': False}	OpenAlex is a public API and does not need a proxy. Leave this off unless your account requires egress through Apify…

Example input

{
  "searchQuery": "large language models",
  "fromPublicationDate": "2025-01-01",
  "maxResults": 3,
  "proxyConfiguration": {
    "useApifyProxy": false
  }
}

📤 Output

Every row is one dataset item.

Field	Type	Notes
openalex_id	string	OpenAlex work identifier.
doi	string	DOI URL, when the work has one.
title	string	Work title.
publication_year	integer	Year of publication.
publication_date	string	Publication date (YYYY-MM-DD).
type	string	Work type, e.g. article, preprint.
language	string	Two-letter language code.
cited_by_count	integer	Number of citing works.
is_open_access	boolean	Whether a free full text exists.
oa_status	string	Open-access colour, e.g. gold, green, closed.
source_name	string	Journal or repository name.
landing_page_url	string	Publisher landing page.
pdf_url	string	Direct PDF URL when OpenAlex knows one.
authors	array	Author display names, in listed order.
first_author	string	First author's display name.
institutions	array	Distinct affiliated institution names.
countries_count	integer	Distinct author countries.

Example output

{}

💰 Pricing

Pay-Per-Event — you pay only when these events fire:

Event	USD	What it is
actor-start	$0.05	One-off warm-up charge per run
result	$0.002	Per dataset item

Example: 1 000 results at the rates above ≈ $2.05. No subscription, no minimum, no card to start — Apify gives every new account $5 of free credit.

🚧 Limitations

• Metadata and links only — it does not download PDFs or reconstruct abstracts.
• Citation counts are OpenAlex's own and will differ from Scopus or Web of Science.

❓ FAQ

Do I need an API key?

No. OpenAlex is free and keyless. The Actor identifies itself politely so runs stay inside the shared rate limit.

How deep can I page?

OpenAlex's cursor paging has no 10 000-record wall, so the only limit is the Maximum works you set.

Are abstracts included?

No — the row carries metadata and links. Abstracts are inverted-index encoded in OpenAlex and are a poor fit for a flat spreadsheet column.

💬 Your feedback

Spotted a bug, hit a weird edge case, or need a new field? Open an issue on the Actor's Issues tab on Apify Console — we ship fixes weekly and we read every report.

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