Research Paper Search: Google Scholar Alternative (OpenAlex)

Search more than 250 million scholarly papers and export clean rows. You get title, authors, year, journal, citation count, abstract, DOI, a free PDF link when one exists, and topic. Search by keyword or look up a list of DOIs. Filter by year, citations, type, and open access, and sort by relevance, most cited, or newest.

• Built on OpenAlex, the open catalog of the world's research (successor to Microsoft Academic). The data is CC0 public domain, so it's yours to use however you like.
• Fields Google Scholar exports don't give you: full abstract, all authors and institutions, field and topic, keywords, retraction flag, open-access PDF link.
• Exact phrases: put quotes around a phrase ("growth mindset") to match it exactly in titles and abstracts.
• Most cited first: find the landmark papers on a topic in one run.
• Ready-to-paste citations: every paper comes with an APA 7 reference and a BibTeX entry. Journal names are cross-checked against Crossref, the official DOI registry.

Sample output (real, "growth mindset", most cited, open access, articles since 2015, Oct 2026)

{
  "type": "paper",
  "query": "\"growth mindset\"",
  "rank": 1,
  "title": "A national experiment reveals where a growth mindset improves achievement",
  "year": 2019,
  "publicationDate": "2019-08-07",
  "authors": ["David Scott Yeager", "Paul Hanselman", "Gregory M. Walton", "…", "Angela Lee Duckworth", "Carol Sorich Dweck"],
  "authorCount": 25,
  "institutions": ["The University of Texas at Austin", "Stanford University", "Northwestern University", "…"],
  "venue": "Nature",
  "workType": "article",
  "citedBy": 1511,
  "doi": "10.1038/s41586-019-1466-y",
  "url": "https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-019-1466-y",
  "isOpenAccess": true,
  "pdfUrl": "https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1466-y.pdf",
  "abstract": "A global priority for the behavioural sciences is to develop cost-effective, scalable interventions that could improve the academic outcomes of adolescents at a population level, but no such interventions have so far bee…",
  "field": "Psychology",
  "topic": "Education, Achievement, and Giftedness",
  "keywords": ["growth mindset", "academic performance", "adolescents", "online intervention"],
  "language": "en",
  "isRetracted": false,
  "referencesCount": 42,
  "openAlexId": "W2964722401",
  "citationApa": "Yeager, D. S., Hanselman, P., Walton, G. M., … Dweck, C. S. (2019). A national experiment reveals where a growth mindset improves achievement. Nature, 573(7774), 364–369. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-019-1466-y [shortened: the real field lists the first 19 authors, as APA 7 requires]",
  "bibtex": "@article{yeager2019national,\n  title = {A national experiment reveals where a growth mindset improves achievement},\n  author = {Yeager, David Scott and … and Dweck, Carol Sorich},\n  journal = {Nature},\n  year = {2019},\n  volume = {573},\n  number = {7774},\n  pages = {364--369},\n  doi = {10.1038/s41586-019-1466-y}\n} [authors shortened]"
}

OpenAlex had 4,019 works matching that phrase. Rank 2 was "Motivation to learn: an overview of contemporary theories" (1,054 citations).

How to use

1. Add search queries (one per line) and/or DOIs.
2. Optional: sort by relevance / most cited / newest; from / to year; minimum citations; open access only; type (article, review, preprint, book, dissertation…); max papers per query.
3. Run, then export from the Dataset tab (JSON, CSV, Excel, BibTeX-ready fields, or API).

Sample inputs

{ "queries": ["\"growth mindset\""], "sortBy": "citations", "fromYear": 2015, "openAccessOnly": true, "type": "article" }

{ "dois": ["10.1177/1529100612453266", "https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-019-1466-y"] }

Pricing

• $0.002 per paper ($2 per 1,000). No start fee.
• Queries with no matches, and DOIs that aren't found, cost nothing.

Who it's for

• Students and researchers: literature reviews, a reading list of the most-cited papers, free PDFs first, and APA/BibTeX citations ready to paste
• AI and RAG builders: abstracts and metadata to feed a model or a research agent
• Analysts, journalists, and R&D teams: what the research says on a topic, who publishes it, and how it's trending
• Librarians and bibliometrics: citation counts and open-access status for a list of DOIs

FAQ

Is this Google Scholar data? No. Google doesn't allow Scholar to be scraped. OpenAlex indexes a similar universe of papers (journals, preprints, books, theses) from Crossref, PubMed, arXiv, institutional repositories, and more, and its data is open. Are the citations exactly right? They're built from the paper's metadata to APA 7 and BibTeX rules, with journal names checked against Crossref. Titles are kept as published (APA wants sentence case for article titles), and source metadata occasionally has errors, so check a reference before you submit it. Full text? No. You get the abstract, plus pdfUrl when a legal open-access copy exists. How many results can one query return? Up to 10,000 (set "max papers per query"). Narrow with quotes and filters for better results. "Daily budget used up"? OpenAlex gives this Actor a free daily allowance that resets at midnight UTC. If it ever runs out, add your own free OpenAlex key in the input and the run continues.

Students: want this in a simple app? PsychLab Assistant is our free front end for the same paper search, with one-click APA citations. More tools at Kramer Labs.

Data source and responsible use

Data comes from the OpenAlex API. OpenAlex data is CC0 public domain, so you can reuse it freely, including commercially. Rows are bibliographic metadata (titles, authors, abstracts as published). Full texts stay with their publishers; pdfUrl points only to legal open-access copies.