OpenAlex Scraper - Scholarly Works & Citations

Disclaimer: This Actor is an independent tool and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by OurResearch or any of its subsidiaries. All trademarks mentioned are the property of their respective owners. "OpenAlex" is referenced only to describe the publicly available website this Actor collects data from.

Search OpenAlex - an open catalog of 250M+ scholarly works - and get clean rows for every paper: title, DOI, authors, institutions, venue/journal, year, citation count, open-access status, topics and a PDF link where available. Search any topic, or use OpenAlex filter syntax. Built on the official API - no key, no browser.

What you get per work

Field	Meaning
title / doi / openAlexUrl	Title, DOI, and the OpenAlex record
authors / authorCount / institutions	Authors and their institutions
venue / venueType	Journal / repository / conference
publicationYear / publicationDate / workType	Dates and type (article, preprint, dataset…)
citedByCount / referencedWorksCount	Citations received and references made
isOpenAccess / oaStatus / pdfUrl	Open-access status and free full-text link
topics / language	Concepts/topics and language

Input

{ "searchQueries": ["machine learning"], "sortBy": "cited", "maxItemsPerQuery": 100 }

• Search queries - one per line (searches titles, abstracts and full text).
• Filter - or use an OpenAlex filter expression, e.g. publication_year:2024,is_oa:true.
• Import from a file - paste a list, or link a public .txt/.csv, a Google Sheet/Drive link, or an Apify key-value-store record.
• Sort by relevance, most cited, or newest. Max works bound the run. Output fields trim it.

Leave everything empty and the run returns a small free sample so you can see the shape first.

Reliability

Reads the official OpenAlex API - public, no key, no proxy, no anti-bot, cursor-paginated for deep result sets. A run that returns nothing bills $0.

Honest limits

• Metadata and links, not full text. You get the record and (for open-access works) a pdfUrl; closed-access works have a landingPageUrl at the publisher instead.
• pdfUrl is present only for open-access works - it reflects the work's OA status, not a scraping gap.

Pricing

$0.002 per work on the FREE tier (tiered pricing lowers it with volume). Only works actually saved are billed; an empty run costs nothing.

Output views

• Works - title, authors, venue, year, citations, OA status, DOI and the PDF link.

Use with AI assistants (MCP)

Available through the Apify MCP server - an agent can pull the most-cited or newest works on a topic (with DOIs and citation counts) for a review or a RAG index.

Agent-ready: autonomous payments (x402 & Skyfire)

This actor is agent-ready - AI agents can discover it, run it, and pay for it autonomously, with no Apify account and no human in the loop. It uses pay-per-event pricing and limited permissions, so it qualifies for Apify's agentic-payment standards:

• x402 - an open, HTTP-native payment protocol. Agents pay per run in USDC on the Base network directly through the Apify MCP server - no account, no API key.
• Skyfire - agent-to-service payments for fully autonomous AI-agent workflows.

Building an AI agent, MCP tool, or autonomous data pipeline? This scraper is ready to plug in and pay as it goes.

Automate & schedule

Run this Actor on autopilot and pull results into your own stack:

• Apify API - start runs, fetch datasets and manage schedules over REST.
• apify-client for JavaScript and apify-client for Python - official SDKs.
• Schedules - run it hourly, daily or weekly and keep your dataset current.
• Webhooks - trigger downstream actions (CRM import, Slack alert, email sequence) the moment a run finishes.

import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

const client = new ApifyClient({ token: 'MY_APIFY_TOKEN' });

const run = await client.actor('scrapesage/openalex-scraper').call({
    "searchQueries": [
        "machine learning"
    ],
    "maxItemsPerQuery": 25
});

const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
console.log(`Got ${items.length} records`);

Integrate with any app

Connect the dataset to thousands of apps - no code required:

• Make - multi-step automation scenarios.
• Zapier - push new records straight into your CRM or spreadsheet.
• Slack - get notified when a scheduled run finds something new.
• Google Drive / Sheets - auto-export every run to a spreadsheet.
• Airbyte - pipe results into your data warehouse.
• GitHub - trigger runs from commits or releases.

FAQ

How is this Actor billed? Pay-per-event: you pay only for the results it delivers, with no monthly rental and no start fee. The per-event price is shown on the Pricing tab.

Can I schedule it and get results automatically? Yes - create a Schedule and add a webhook or an integration (Google Sheets, Slack, Make, Zapier) to push each run's dataset wherever you need it.

Which export formats are available? Every run's dataset can be downloaded as JSON, CSV, Excel (XLSX), XML, HTML or RSS from the Apify Console or the API.

Can I run it from code or an AI agent? Yes - through the Apify API and client libraries, or from Claude, ChatGPT and other assistants via the Apify MCP server.

Is it legal to scrape OpenAlex? This Actor collects publicly available data only. You are responsible for using the output in compliance with applicable laws (including data-protection law where personal data is involved) and the source's terms. See the Disclaimer below.

Is this an official OpenAlex tool? No. It is an independent, third-party Actor with no affiliation to, endorsement by or sponsorship from OurResearch. See the Disclaimer below.

Disclaimer

This Actor is an independent tool and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by OurResearch or any of its subsidiaries. All trademarks mentioned are the property of their respective owners.

"OpenAlex" and any related marks are the property of their respective owners and are used here only in a descriptive, nominative sense - to identify the publicly accessible website from which this Actor collects data. This Actor is not an official OpenAlex product, is not authorised or certified by OurResearch, and does not distribute OpenAlex software. It collects only publicly available information; you are responsible for ensuring your use of that data complies with applicable laws, regulations and the terms of the source website.

Need help?

Open an issue on the Actor's Issues tab, or visit the Apify help center. Feature requests are welcome - this Actor is actively maintained.