Research Papers Citations Monitor - Google Scholar Alternative

Source: OpenAlex, the open index of scholarly works. OpenAlex data is released under CC0 (public domain). This Actor reads the official OpenAlex API. It does not read Google Scholar, and it does not open publisher pages.

Search research papers, get their cited-by counts, see which new papers cite a paper, and monitor a search or a list of papers so that each run returns only what changed.

No API key needed, with one limit. Without a key OpenAlex gives each IP address a small daily budget, and Apify addresses are shared. If that shared budget is used up, the run returns a free row that says so and charges nothing. For steady scheduled use, put your own OpenAlex API key into openAlexApiKey: it is free and OpenAlex gives every key $1 of usage per day.

Three ways to use it:

You give	You get
A search (text, author, institution, journal or conference, field, years, open access)	One row per paper: title, authors and affiliations, publication date, venue, DOI, cited-by count, open-access PDF link, abstract
A list of papers (DOI or OpenAlex ID)	One row per paper with its cited-by count, followed by the newest papers that cite it
Either of the above with monitoring on	Only new papers since the last run, or only the papers whose citation count rose, with their new citing papers

Why use this as a Google Scholar alternative

• Official open data, no blocking. OpenAlex publishes this data for reuse (CC0) and its robots.txt allows the API. No CAPTCHA, no proxy.
• Exact authors. Filter by ORCID or OpenAlex author ID, so namesakes are not mixed in. If you only have a name and several authors share it, the run returns the candidates for free instead of silently picking one.
• Citation tracking that tells you what is new. Give DOIs once, schedule the run, and get a row only when a citation count rises, together with the new citing papers.
• You are told what happened. A run that finds nothing, finds nothing new, cannot read the source or stops at a limit returns a row that says so. Those rows are not charged.

Input

Field	What it does
search	Words to look for in the title and abstract. Use double quotes for an exact phrase.
searchScope	title-abstract (used when left empty) or fulltext. Full text also matches papers that only mention the words in their body.
authorIds	ORCID iDs (0000-0002-1825-0097) or OpenAlex author IDs (A5023888391). One kind per run.
authorName	A plain name, when you have no ID. One match: used. Several matches: candidate rows (free), no paper is read.
institutionIds	ROR IDs (00f54p054) or OpenAlex institution IDs (I97018004). One kind per run.
sourceIds	Journals, conferences or repositories by ISSN (0028-0836) or OpenAlex source ID (S137773608). One kind per run.
field	One of the 26 OpenAlex fields (Computer Science, Medicine, ...). Matches the paper's primary topic.
publicationYearFrom, publicationYearTo	Publication year range.
openAccess	any, open or closed.
sortBy	newest, most-cited or relevance (relevance needs search).
maxPapers	How many papers a search returns at most (default 100, up to 10,000 per run).
papers	Citation tracking: DOIs (10.1038/nature14539) or OpenAlex work IDs (W2919115771), up to 1,000. Not combined with the search fields.
maxCitingPapersPerPaper	Newest citing papers returned per paper (default 20, 0 to 200).
includeAbstract	Rebuild the abstract text when OpenAlex holds one (default on).
monitoringMode	Return only what is new since the last run (see below).
resetMonitoringState	Forget what monitoring remembers for this search or these papers.
openAlexApiKey	Optional. Your own OpenAlex API key (see "Limits of the source").

Example: newest open-access papers on a topic from one institution

{ "search": "\"retrieval augmented generation\"", "institutionIds": ["00f54p054"], "openAccess": "open", "maxPapers": 50 }

Example: citation tracking

{ "papers": ["10.1038/nature14539", "W2741809807"], "maxCitingPapersPerPaper": 10 }

Output

One row per paper. Main columns:

Column	Meaning
recordType	paper, or citing-paper (a paper that cites the one in citesPaperId)
title, type, language	As recorded by OpenAlex
authorNames, authors	Author names; per author the OpenAlex author ID, institutions and countries
authorCount, authorListTruncated	OpenAlex list answers hold at most 100 authors per paper. When a paper has 100 or more, authorListTruncated is true, authorCount is null and the lists hold the first 100
publicationDate, publicationYear, publicationDateIsInFuture	Publication date as recorded. OpenAlex holds some papers with a future date; the flag marks them
venue, venueType, venueIssn, publisher	Where it was published
doi, doiUrl, openAlexId, openAlexUrl, landingPageUrl	Identifiers and links
citedByCount	Number of works in OpenAlex that cite this paper
isOpenAccess, openAccessStatus, openAccessPdfUrl, openAccessUrl	Open-access state and the link to a free PDF when OpenAlex knows one (null otherwise)
abstract, hasAbstract	Abstract text rebuilt from OpenAlex's word index; null when OpenAlex has none
topic, field	Primary topic and its field
isRetracted, referencedWorksCount	Retraction flag; length of the reference list
change, previousCitedByCount, citedByCountChange, previousCheckedAt	Filled by monitoring
searchedFor, searchScope	The exact search and filter the run sent; where the text was looked for
status, note	ok for paper rows; anything else is a free row that explains what happened

Values that OpenAlex does not hold are null. Nothing is estimated.

Monitoring

A search. The first run remembers the matching papers published in the last 365 days and returns no paper (free). Later runs with the same search return only papers that were not there before, as change: new-paper. Papers are compared by OpenAlex ID, not by date, because OpenAlex often adds a paper days or weeks after its publication date. Limits: a paper added with a publication date older than 365 days is not seen, and a search matching more than 10,000 papers in that window is refused with a free row (narrow it).

A list of papers. The first run remembers each citation count and the list of citing papers (free). Later runs return a paper only when its citation count rose or a new citing paper appeared: one paper row with previousCitedByCount and citedByCountChange, then one citing-paper row for each new citing paper. Papers with more than 10,000 citing papers cannot be monitored (the plain lookup still works for them).

A monitoring run that compares and finds nothing new returns one free row and is charged one small search-checked event. If the maximum charge of a run stops it early, what was not delivered is not remembered and comes back in the next run. OpenAlex updates about once a day at most, so a daily or weekly schedule is enough. Do not run the same monitoring search twice at the same moment.

Pricing

Pay per result: each paper row (paper and citing-paper) is one paper-returned event. Rows that explain an empty or failed run, author candidates and the first monitoring run are free. A monitoring run with nothing new costs one search-checked event.

Limits of the source (measured 2026-10-06)

• Daily budget without a key. OpenAlex gives each IP address a daily budget of $0.10 at its own list prices: about 100 text-search requests or 1,000 filter-only requests per day (one request returns up to 200 papers). Apify IP addresses are shared, so the budget can already be used up. When that happens the run returns a free row saying so. A free OpenAlex API key in openAlexApiKey raises the budget to $1 per day according to OpenAlex. The run log shows the budget left.
• Citation counts differ between indexes. For six highly cited 2025 Nature papers, OpenAlex's count was 3% to 16% lower than Crossref's is-referenced-by-count for the same DOI. Google Scholar counts differently again. Compare counts over time within one index, not across indexes.
• citedByCount and the number of citing papers that can be listed can differ by a few (1,055 against 1,047 for one paper).
• Author lists stop at 100 in list answers (see authorListTruncated).
• With searchScope: fulltext a matching paper may not show the words in its title or abstract (20 of 50 did in one test, against 50 of 50 with the title-and-abstract search). In the title-and-abstract search, commas and | in the text are read as spaces. OpenAlex does not share the abstract text of some papers: such a paper can still match on its abstract while abstract is null (11 of 50 in one test on a single journal).
• An author, institution or source ID that does not exist returns the free no-results row, the same as a real empty result.
• The same paper can exist twice in OpenAlex (for example a preprint and the published version) under different IDs.

Related Actors

• arXiv Scraper - preprints straight from arXiv
• PubMed Scraper - biomedical literature from PubMed

Is it legal to use this data?

OpenAlex states that its data is released under CC0 and its API robots.txt allows access. Author names and affiliations are part of the published scholarly record; this Actor does not collect emails, phone numbers or ORCID iDs in paper rows. You are responsible for how you use the output.

Thanks for using this Actor

We build these tools for people who run them every day, and we improve them from what users tell us.

• Missing a field, or need another filter? Tell us in the Issues tab. If the data is there, we add it.
• Found a bug or a wrong value? Post the run ID in the Issues tab. Wrong data is the thing we fix first.

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