Research Papers API - OpenAlex Works, Authors, Citations

Search and export research papers, citing works, authors, journals, institutions, topics, publishers and funders from the OpenAlex scholarly index, as one clean dataset row per record.

OpenAlex is the open catalog of the global research system: more than 300 million works (journal articles, preprints, books, chapters, datasets, dissertations and conference papers) linked to their authors, institutions, journals, topics and funders, with citation counts and open access status. This actor wraps the read only entity endpoints of the OpenAlex REST API on api.openalex.org: give a keyword search, filters, a list of IDs or DOIs, and get deduplicated rows with authors, journal, open access links, citations, topic and the plain text abstract already flattened, which you can download as JSON, CSV or Excel, schedule, or feed into literature reviews, bibliometrics, research intelligence dashboards, RAG pipelines, Google Sheets and AI agents.

Runs keyless or with your own free OpenAlex API key. Live-tested on 2026-10-22 without a key: a works search with date, type, open access, citation and sort filters returned real records through this actor's client; every filter field was confirmed against the API.

What it does

• Works search: research papers, preprints, books, datasets and dissertations by keyword (title, abstract and full text, title only, title and abstract, or exact words with wildcards), with AND, OR, NOT and phrase search.
• Works filters: publication date range, work type, open access (any, open, closed) and status (diamond, gold, green, hybrid, bronze), language, minimum citations, retracted works left out, author, institution, journal or other source, topic, funder and author country, plus any raw OpenAlex filter.
• Citing works: every paper that cites one or more works you name, for citation tracking and forward snowballing.
• Author, source, institution, topic, publisher and funder search: profiles with works count, citation count, h-index, i10-index, country, type, ORCID, ROR or ISSN, and the IDs the works filters take.
• Lookup by ID or DOI: single records by OpenAlex ID, DOI, PMID, ORCID, ROR or ISSN, up to 500 per run. Single records are free on OpenAlex.
• Sorting: relevance, most cited, newest, oldest, most works or name.
• Abstracts: the plain text abstract rebuilt from the OpenAlex abstract index, where one exists.
• Deep paging: cursor paging with a key for any number of results, basic paging up to 10,000 results per lookup without one.
• Pay only for results: refused and empty lookups are recorded as a free row that says why, never charged.

Nothing is written to any OpenAlex account: only GET endpoints are called.

Do I need an API key?

No. OpenAlex answers without a key, on a small free budget ($0.10 a day) that is shared by every caller on the same IP address, at up to 10 requests a second, and only the first 10,000 results of a lookup can be paged. For regular or larger runs, add your own free key: create an account at openalex.org and copy the key from Settings, API key. It gives you your own $1 a day (about 10,000 filtered list calls or 1,000 searches), 30 requests a second and cursor paging. The key is sent only to api.openalex.org in the Authorization header and never logged.

Input

Field	Used by	Example
What to get	all	Works search
Search	Works and every profile search	CRISPR gene editing
Search in	Works search	Title and abstract
Sort	all list modes	Most cited first
Published from, Published to	Works, citing works	2023-01-01 to 2024-12-31
Work types	Works, citing works	article, review
Open access, Open access status	Works, citing works (open access also sources)	Open access only, gold
Language	Works, citing works	en
Minimum citations	all list modes	50
Leave out retracted works, Corpus	Works, citing works	on, Core
Cited work IDs	Citing works	W2741809807
Author, institution, source, topic, funder IDs	Works, citing works (institutions also authors)	A5023888391, I63966007
Publisher IDs	Sources	P4310319965
Country codes	Works, authors, sources, institutions, publishers, funders	US, GB
Extra filter	all list modes	publication_year:2020-2024,has_fulltext:true
Identifiers, Record type	Lookup by ID or DOI	10.7717/peerj.4375, Auto
Include abstract	Works	on
Max results	all	100
API key	all, optional	your OpenAlex key

Example input for the most cited open access CRISPR papers since 2023:

{
    "mode": "works",
    "searchQueries": ["CRISPR gene editing"],
    "fromPublicationDate": "2023-01-01",
    "workTypes": ["article", "review"],
    "openAccess": "openOnly",
    "minCitations": 50,
    "sort": "mostCited",
    "maxResults": 200
}

Example output

{
    "mode": "works",
    "recordType": "work",
    "query": "search \"CRISPR gene editing\"",
    "id": "W4313531093",
    "openalexUrl": "https://openalex.org/W4313531093",
    "name": "Hallmarks of aging: An expanding universe",
    "doi": "10.1016/j.cell.2022.11.001",
    "publicationYear": 2023,
    "publicationDate": "2023-01-01",
    "type": "article",
    "authors": "Carlos Lopez-Otin; Maria A. Blasco; Linda Partridge; Manuel Serrano; Guido Kroemer",
    "authorCount": 5,
    "countries": "ES, DE, GB, FR",
    "sourceName": "Cell",
    "issnL": "0092-8674",
    "publisher": "Cell Press",
    "volume": "186",
    "issue": "2",
    "isOa": true,
    "oaStatus": "bronze",
    "oaUrl": "https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2022.11.001",
    "citedByCount": 6462,
    "fwci": 270.7765,
    "referencedWorksCount": 298,
    "primaryTopic": "Genetics, Aging, and Longevity in Model Organisms",
    "field": "Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology",
    "found": true,
    "note": null,
    "record": { "id": "https://openalex.org/W4313531093", "...": "the full OpenAlex work" }
}

Profiles carry worksCount, citedByCount, hIndex, i10Index, twoYearMeanCitedness, countryCode, type and their identifiers (orcid, ror, issnL), with the full record under record.

FAQ

What is OpenAlex?

OpenAlex is a free and open index of scholarly works, authors, sources, institutions, topics, publishers and funders, run by the nonprofit OurResearch (the team behind Unpaywall) and named after the ancient Library of Alexandria. It replaced Microsoft Academic Graph in 2022 and is used as an open alternative to Scopus, Web of Science and Dimensions. Its data is released under CC0.

How do I search research papers by keyword?

Choose Works search, type a search such as "large language models" AND evaluation, and pick where to search: title, abstract and full text, title only, or title and abstract. Add filters such as a date range, work type, open access or a minimum citation count, and sort by relevance, citations or date.

How do I find all papers that cite a paper?

Find the paper's OpenAlex work ID (search for it, or look its DOI up with Lookup by ID or DOI), then choose Citing works and put the ID in Cited work IDs. Add date, type or open access filters and sort newest first to follow a citation trail.

Can I get all papers by an author or an institution?

Yes. Run Authors search with a name, or Institutions search with a university, to get the OpenAlex ID, then run Works search with no search text and that ID in Author IDs or Institution IDs. Add a date range for an annual publication report.

Can I look up papers by DOI?

Yes. Choose Lookup by ID or DOI and paste DOIs, one per line, in any form (10.7717/peerj.4375, doi:10.7717/peerj.4375 or https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.4375). PMIDs, ORCIDs, ROR URLs, ISSNs and OpenAlex IDs work the same way. Single record lookups are free on OpenAlex.

Does it return abstracts and open access PDF links?

Yes, where OpenAlex has them. The abstract is rebuilt as plain text from the OpenAlex abstract index, and each work carries its open access status, best open access URL, PDF link where known, landing page and licence.

How many results can one run return?

Up to 100,000 rows. With your own key the actor follows the OpenAlex cursor and can page through any result set; without a key each lookup stops at the first 10,000 results, which is the OpenAlex basic paging limit.

How much of my OpenAlex budget does a run use?

One call per page of up to 100 rows. OpenAlex prices a filtered list call at $0.0001, a search at $0.001 and a single record lookup at nothing, so a free key's $1 a day covers about 100,000 search results or 1,000,000 filtered results. When the budget is used up the run ends cleanly and says when it resets (midnight UTC).

What do I pay?

Pay per result: you pay this actor only for rows that carry OpenAlex records. Empty searches and refused lookups are free rows. OpenAlex itself is free up to its daily budget.

Pricing

Event	Price
Research paper or other work returned	0.005 USD
Author, source, institution, topic, publisher or funder returned	0.006 USD

Platform usage is included. Any OpenAlex prepaid usage or plan you buy is billed separately by OpenAlex.

Keyword map

Research papers API, academic papers API, scholarly API, OpenAlex API, OpenAlex scraper, scientific literature search, citation data API, citing papers, bibliometrics, h-index, author publications, institution research output, journal data, ISSN lookup, DOI lookup, ORCID lookup, ROR lookup, open access papers, literature review automation, systematic review search, Google Scholar alternative, Scopus alternative, Web of Science alternative, Microsoft Academic Graph replacement.

Terms and data use

OpenAlex releases its data under the CC0 public domain dedication, with no personal use only carve out: you may store, combine, publish and resell the rows this actor returns. OpenAlex asks that you cite it when you use the data in research. Paid OpenAlex plans pay for API usage and services, not for the data. This actor is not affiliated with or endorsed by OpenAlex or OurResearch.