OpenAlex Scraper

Scholarly works, authors, institutions and journals from OpenAlex, with abstracts, citations, open-access links and h-index, as clean JSON.

OpenAlex is the open catalogue of the world's research: over 300 million papers, preprints, books and datasets, with the authors, institutions and journals behind them. This Actor scrapes OpenAlex by search, filter or link. Get each work's title, abstract, DOI, publication date, type, language, citation count, open-access status and free PDF link, journal with ISSN and publisher, authors with ORCID iDs and affiliations, and research topics. Search authors to get their works count, citations, h-index, i10-index and current institutions. Search institutions or journals to get their output, impact, ROR, ISSNs and APC prices. Paste any openalex.org list or record, or a DOI, ORCID or ROR link. There is no login and no proxy to configure. Built for literature reviews, research analytics and bibliometrics, grant and talent scouting, publisher and journal analysis, and feeding research into search, RAG and summarisation pipelines.

⚡ Quick start

{
  "startUrls": [
    {
      "url": "https://openalex.org/works?search=large%20language%20models&filter=is_oa:true"
    }
  ],
  "maxItems": 5
}

Or search with filters, most cited first:

{
  "searchTerms": ["crispr gene therapy"],
  "filters": "type:article",
  "yearFrom": 2020,
  "yearTo": 2024,
  "openAccessOnly": true,
  "sortBy": "citedByCount",
  "maxItems": 100
}

🧩 Input

Field	Type	Required	Default	Description
startUrls	array	no	—	OpenAlex URLs: a list with its search, filters and sort (openalex.org/works?…, /authors?…, /institutions?…, /sources?…), a single record (openalex.org/W2741809807), or a DOI, ORCID or ROR link.
searchTerms	array	no	—	Search terms, one search per line. Each searches the entity type below, with the filters and sort below.
entityType	string	no	"works"	What the search terms and filters look for: works, authors, institutions or sources (journals and repositories).
maxItems	integer	no	—	Maximum number of results per start URL or search term. The input form starts at 5; leave it empty to get every match.
filters	string	no	—	OpenAlex filters, comma-separated, combined with AND, e.g. type:article,publication_year:2020-2024,authorships.institutions.ror:00f54p054. With no search terms, the filters alone define the list.
yearFrom	integer	no	—	Only works published in or after this year. Works only.
yearTo	integer	no	—	Only works published in or before this year. Works only.
openAccessOnly	boolean	no	false	Only works that are free to read somewhere. Works only.
sortBy	string	no	"relevance"	relevance (most cited when there is no search term), citedByCount, worksCount (authors, institutions, sources), newest or oldest (works).
apiKey	string	no	—	Optional free OpenAlex API key. Raises the daily allowance tenfold.
proxyConfiguration	object	no	{ "useApifyProxy": false }	Proxy settings. OpenAlex needs no proxy.

Add at least one start URL, one search term, or a filter. entityType, filters, yearFrom, yearTo, openAccessOnly and sortBy apply to the search terms; start URLs keep the filters and sort set in them.

Building a list on openalex.org. Search and filter on openalex.org, then copy the address bar into startUrls: the Actor returns the same results. To get every work by one author, institution or journal, use a filter such as authorships.author.id:A5001226970, authorships.institutions.id:I97018004 or primary_location.source.id:S137773608.

📤 Output

Each work, author, institution or source is one dataset row, marked by itemType. Works carry the work fields; authors, institutions and sources carry their own. A field that does not apply to a row's type is left out, and a field OpenAlex has no value for is null.

Fields

Field	Type	Description
itemType	string	work, author, institution or source.
id	string	OpenAlex ID, such as W2741809807, A5001226970, I97018004 or S137773608.
url	string	The record's page on openalex.org.
doi	string	Work: DOI, such as 10.7717/peerj.4375.
title	string	Work: title.
publicationYear	number	Work: year of publication.
publicationDate	string	Work: date of publication (YYYY-MM-DD).
type	string	Work: article, preprint, book-chapter, dataset, … Institution: education, company, healthcare, … Source: journal, repository, conference, …
language	string	Work: language as a two-letter code.
citedByCount	number	Times cited: of the work, or of all works by the author, institution or source.
isOpenAccess	boolean	Work: free to read somewhere. Source: a fully open-access journal or repository.
oaStatus	string	Work: gold, diamond, hybrid, bronze, green or closed.
oaUrl	string	Work: the best place to read it for free.
pdfUrl	string	Work: direct PDF link of the best open-access copy, when there is one.
landingPageUrl	string	Work: the publisher's page for the work.
venue	object	Work: where it was published, with name, issn, publisher and type.
authors	array	Work: authors in order, each with id, name, orcid and institutions (names).
abstractText	string	Work: the abstract as plain text, when the publisher made it available.
topics	array	Up to three research topics, strongest first.
referencedWorksCount	number	Work: number of references OpenAlex matched.
name	string	Author, institution or source: name.
orcid	string	Author: ORCID iD, such as 0000-0002-1992-2684.
worksCount	number	Author, institution or source: number of works.
hIndex	number	Author, institution or source: h-index.
i10Index	number	Author: number of works cited at least ten times.
lastKnownInstitutions	array	Author: current institutions, each with name and country.
country	string	Institution or source: country as a two-letter code.
city	string	Institution: city.
ror	string	Institution: ROR ID link.
homepage	string	Institution or source: website.
issn	array	Source: every ISSN.
issnL	string	Source: linking ISSN.
publisher	string	Source: publisher or host organisation.
isInDoaj	boolean	Source: listed in the Directory of Open Access Journals.
apcUsd	number	Source: article processing charge in US dollars, when known.

An author row:

{
  "itemType": "author",
  "id": "A5001226970",
  "url": "https://openalex.org/A5001226970",
  "name": "Yann LeCun",
  "orcid": "0000-0002-1992-2684",
  "worksCount": 581,
  "citedByCount": 262442,
  "hIndex": 129,
  "i10Index": 320,
  "lastKnownInstitutions": [
    { "name": "Meta (United States)", "country": "US" },
    { "name": "New York University", "country": "US" }
  ],
  "topics": [
    "Advanced Neural Network Applications",
    "Neural Networks and Applications",
    "Domain Adaptation and Few-Shot Learning"
  ]
}

💡 Use cases

• Literature reviews — pull every paper matching a query, year range and type, with abstracts and DOIs, into a spreadsheet or reference manager.
• Research analytics and bibliometrics — citation counts, open-access status and topics for an institution's, a journal's or a country's output.
• Talent and collaborator scouting — find the most cited authors in a field, with their h-index, ORCID and institutions.
• Open-access discovery — free, legal PDF links for papers behind paywalls.
• Journal and publisher analysis — compare journals by output, citations, h-index, open-access status and APC.
• RAG and summarisation — feed abstracts and PDF links into search, embedding or LLM pipelines.

❓ FAQ

• Do I need an account or an API key? No. OpenAlex is free and open. Without a key OpenAlex allows a daily allowance per caller, enough for about 100 search pages or 1,000 filtered pages (up to 100 results each). For more, add a free API key from openalex.org/settings/api, which raises it tenfold. Looking up single records by link is free.
• What happens when the daily allowance runs out? The Actor stops cleanly, keeps what it already saved, and says so in its log and status. The allowance resets at midnight UTC.
• Do I need a proxy? No. It runs without one by default.
• Why is abstractText empty on some works? Some publishers do not let OpenAlex distribute their abstracts. The title, DOI and every other field are still there.
• Why is pdfUrl empty when the work is open access? Some free copies are web pages rather than PDFs. oaUrl always points to the best free copy.
• How do I get all works by one author or institution? Use a filter: authorships.author.id:A5001226970 for an author, authorships.institutions.ror:00f54p054 for an institution, or open the list on openalex.org and paste its URL.
• Which filters can I use? Any OpenAlex filter, such as type:article, publication_year:2020-2024, cited_by_count:>100, institutions.country_code:DE, primary_topic.field.id:17 or has_abstract:true. Join them with commas. The log shows OpenAlex's message when it rejects a filter.
• Does it download the PDFs? No. Every work carries pdfUrl and oaUrl, so you can fetch the files you need.

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🤝 Anyx Solutions

We build custom scrapers and data-extraction pipelines.

• Email: tantosthor@gmail.com

🖼 Image credit

Image credit: openalex.org