OpenAlex Scraper API – Papers, Citations & OA

OpenAlex scraper for scholarly works via the OpenAlex API: title, year, citation count, open-access status, DOI and topics. CC0, no author names. No login. RAG-ready JSON, MCP-ready.

What does it do?

• Search OpenAlex works by free-text query.
• Optional fromYear filter and maxItems cap.
• Return OpenAlex id, title, year, cited_by count, type, DOI, OA flag/URL and topics.
• Author names are omitted on purpose.

Use cases

• Citation research: find highly cited works on a topic.
• OA discovery: filter open-access papers for RAG corpora.
• Bibliometrics: export JSON/CSV for dashboards.
• AI agents: scholarly search via Apify MCP without scraping publisher HTML.

Input

Field	Description
query	Search query. Example: retrieval augmented generation
fromYear	Optional minimum publication year. Example: 2020
maxItems	Max works. Example: 50

Example input:

{
  "query": "retrieval augmented generation",
  "fromYear": 2020,
  "maxItems": 15
}

Output

Real output (sample from a prior run on 27 Oct 2026, Europe/Madrid):

[
  {
    "openalexId": "https://openalex.org/W4410705984",
    "title": "Corrective Retrieval Augmented Generation",
    "publicationYear": 2025,
    "citedByCount": 177,
    "type": "preprint",
    "doi": "10.2139/ssrn.5267341",
    "isOa": true,
    "oaUrl": "https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.5267341",
    "topics": [
      "Topic Modeling",
      "Information Retrieval and Search Behavior",
      "Multimodal Machine Learning Applications"
    ],
    "url": "https://openalex.org/W4410705984"
  },
  {
    "openalexId": "https://openalex.org/W4389519118",
    "title": "Active Retrieval Augmented Generation",
    "publicationYear": 2023,
    "citedByCount": 492,
    "type": "conference-paper",
    "doi": "10.18653/v1/2023.emnlp-main.495",
    "isOa": true,
    "oaUrl": "https://aclanthology.org/2023.emnlp-main.495.pdf",
    "topics": [
      "Topic Modeling",
      "Information Retrieval and Search Behavior",
      "Natural Language Processing Techniques"
    ],
    "url": "https://openalex.org/W4389519118"
  }
]

Export as JSON, CSV or Excel, read through the API, or send to Google Sheets, Make, Zapier, n8n or webhooks. You can also run this Actor from AI agents through the Apify MCP server.

Pricing

Pay per event: $0.60 per 1,000 works plus $0.00005 per run start. There is no extra platform usage charge beyond Apify’s normal platform fees if any apply to your plan.

FAQ

Are authors included? No. This Actor omits author names; use OpenAlex directly if you need them.

License? OpenAlex data is CC0. Cite OpenAlex when redistributing.

Can AI agents use it? Yes. JSON is suited to RAG pipelines and MCP clients.

Data source and license

Source: OpenAlex API. Data CC0. Not affiliated with OurResearch / OpenAlex.

This Actor is not affiliated with or endorsed by the data source. You are responsible for using the data in line with the source's license and terms.