Academic Papers API: OpenAlex & Crossref Search

Academic Papers API searches OpenAlex and Crossref in one run and returns research paper metadata as clean JSON rows, deduplicated by DOI, with authors and ORCID iDs, citation counts, open access status, PDF links and openly licensed abstracts. No API key needed. Three modes:

• Topic search: keywords such as CRISPR gene editing or "large language models", with year and open access filters.
• DOI lookup: full metadata and citation counts for a list of up to 500 DOIs.
• Author search: an author's papers by name or ORCID iD, sorted by newest or most cited.

Turn on monitor mode and schedule the Actor to get only papers you haven't seen before, for a topic or an author.

Use it as a research paper search API, OpenAlex API or Crossref API for literature search, systematic reviews, citation analysis and AI research agents. Export as CSV, JSON or Excel.

Not affiliated with any data source. This Actor is independent and is not affiliated with or endorsed by OpenAlex/OurResearch or Crossref. It reads their public APIs.

Why use this academic papers API?

• Two databases, one schema. OpenAlex (all disciplines, including arXiv preprints and PubMed-indexed papers) and Crossref (the DOI registry) return the same fields, so you don't write two integrations.
• One row per paper. The same paper found in several sources is merged into one row (matched by DOI, or exact title and year), and foundIn lists the sources. You pay once per paper.
• Citation counts and open access links for every paper. Papers found only in Crossref are looked up in OpenAlex by DOI (one batched request per 50 papers) to add citation counts, open access status and free-to-read links.
• Author search that checks names. OpenAlex picks its best-matching author profile (shown in the run SUMMARY); Crossref results are kept only when an author has the same family name and first initial.
• Pay per paper returned. Invalid DOIs, DOIs not found, source errors and notes are free status rows. The only other charges are the small Actor start fee and, in monitor mode, one fee per run that finds new papers.
• Abstracts only where the licence allows. An abstract is returned only when an openly available version of the paper carries a CC0, CC BY, CC BY-SA or public-domain licence (shown in abstractLicence). Otherwise abstractStatus says why it was left out.
• Polite to the sources. Each source is paced separately and identified with a contact address.

How do I search academic papers? Quick start

Press Start with the prefilled input, or paste this into the JSON view of the Input tab. It returns up to 25 papers about CRISPR gene editing published since 2023, from both sources.

{
  "mode": "search",
  "query": "CRISPR gene editing",
  "yearFrom": 2023,
  "maxResultsPerSource": 10,
  "maxResults": 25
}

In our test run on 1 November 2026 it read 20 records from the two sources, merged 1 duplicate and returned 19 papers in about 2.4 seconds (3 API requests). 9 papers found only in Crossref got citation counts from OpenAlex. 5 of the 19 came with an abstract under an open licence.

Look up DOIs (with or without https://doi.org/):

{
  "mode": "doi",
  "dois": ["10.1126/science.1225829", "10.1038/nature14539", "10.48550/arXiv.1706.03762"]
}

An author's most cited papers:

{
  "mode": "author",
  "author": "Jennifer A. Doudna",
  "sortBy": "mostCited",
  "maxResults": 20
}

Put a phrase in double quotes ("\"base editing\"") to keep only papers with that exact phrase in the title or abstract.

Who it's for

• Researchers, librarians and students running literature searches and systematic reviews across databases.
• Data and analytics teams building citation, bibliometric or research-trend datasets.
• AI and RAG developers who need clean metadata and open access PDF links for research agents.
• Science publishers, funders and biotech or pharma teams tracking new papers on a topic, a drug or a researcher.

What can I do with academic paper data?

1. Literature search across databases. One query, two sources, duplicates merged, ready for screening.
2. DOI list enrichment. Add titles, authors, venues, citation counts, open access links and retraction flags to a reference list.
3. New-paper alerts. A topic or author with monitorMode on, sorted by newest, on a weekly schedule.
4. Author publication lists. Every paper for an ORCID iD, newest first, with co-authors and affiliations.
5. Open access finder. openAccessOnly with oaUrl and pdfUrl to collect free full texts.

What does the output look like?

Rows from the DOI lookup test run on 1 November 2026 (citation counts from OpenAlex on that day):

Year	Title	Venue	Cited by	Open access	Found in
2017	Attention Is All You Need	arXiv (Cornell University)	120,297	green	OpenAlex
2015	Deep learning	Nature	84,126	green	OpenAlex, Crossref
2020	Array programming with NumPy	Nature	23,826	hybrid	OpenAlex, Crossref
2012	A Programmable Dual-RNA–Guided DNA Endonuclease in Adaptive Bacterial Immunity	Science	17,116	green	OpenAlex, Crossref

The same run returned a free invalid_doi row for not-a-doi and a free not_found row for a DOI no source knew. Of the four papers, only Array programming with NumPy (CC BY) came with its abstract.

One row, shortened:

{
  "rowType": "paper",
  "paperId": "doi:10.1038/nature14539",
  "doi": "10.1038/nature14539",
  "title": "Deep learning",
  "authors": [{ "name": "Yann LeCun", "orcid": "0000-0002-1992-2684", "affiliations": ["Meta (United States)", "New York University"] }, "..."],
  "authorCount": 3,
  "publicationYear": 2015,
  "venue": "Nature",
  "isOpenAccess": true,
  "oaStatus": "green",
  "citedByCount": 84126,
  "citedByCountSource": "OPENALEX",
  "ids": { "doi": "10.1038/nature14539", "openalex": "W2919115771", "pmid": "26017442", "pmcid": null, "arxiv": null },
  "abstract": null,
  "abstractStatus": "none_at_source",
  "abstractLicence": null,
  "foundIn": ["OPENALEX", "CROSSREF"],
  "enrichedFrom": [],
  "url": "https://doi.org/10.1038/nature14539"
}

Input: how do I filter academic papers?

Mode (mode)

search (topic search), doi (DOI lookup) or author (author search).

Search query (query)

Keywords for topic search, e.g. microplastics drinking water. Quoted phrases ("base editing") must appear in the title or abstract: the sources match quotes loosely, so the Actor checks each phrase itself and reads extra results to make up for the ones it drops.

DOIs (dois)

Up to 500 DOIs, one per line, with or without https://doi.org/. arXiv DOIs (10.48550/arXiv.…) work too.

Author name or ORCID iD (author)

A full name (Jennifer A. Doudna) or an ORCID iD (0000-0001-9161-999X). ORCID iDs search both sources.

Sources (sources)

OPENALEX, CROSSREF or both. Default: both.

Published from / to (yearFrom, yearTo)

Publication year range, applied by each source.

Open access only (openAccessOnly)

Only papers known to be free to read. Papers with unknown status are left out.

Sort by (sortBy)

relevance (default), newest or mostCited.

Maximum papers returned (maxResults)

Most paper rows returned and charged per run, after merging. Default 50; 0 means no limit (up to 10,000).

Maximum papers read per source (maxResultsPerSource)

How many results to read from each source before merging (1 to 1,000, default 25). Reading isn't charged; you pay per paper row returned.

Merge duplicates across sources (deduplicate)

On by default. Turn off to get one row per source record.

Add OpenAlex citation counts and open access links (enrichWithOpenAlex)

On by default. Fills citation counts and open access links for papers found only in Crossref. enrichedFrom shows when it was used.

Include openly licensed abstracts (includeAbstract)

On by default. An abstract is returned only when an openly available version of the paper carries a CC0, CC BY, CC BY-SA or public-domain licence. Many abstracts may be under the publisher's or author's copyright, so many rows have no abstract; abstractStatus says why. Turn off if you only need metadata.

Your OpenAlex API key (openAlexApiKey, optional)

Not needed. Without a key, OpenAlex shares a small daily allowance per network; for large or frequent runs, paste your own free OpenAlex key. It is stored as a secret input and never written to the output.

Monitor mode (monitorMode), first run (emitBaselineOnFirstRun), state store (stateStoreName)

See How do I get alerts for new papers?.

Output: what fields does each paper have?

Field	What it is
rowType	paper, or status for free status rows
paperId	Stable ID: doi:… or openalex:…
doi, ids	DOI, plus OpenAlex, PubMed, PMC and arXiv IDs
title	Title
abstract, abstractSource, abstractLicence	Abstract (openly licensed papers only), which source it came from, and the licence it is shared under
abstractStatus	included_open_licence, withheld_copyright (the source has an abstract but the licence doesn't allow sharing it), none_at_source or not_requested
authors, authorCount	Names in order, ORCID iDs where published, affiliations
publicationYear, publicationDate	Year and date
venue, publisher, type, language	Journal or repository, publisher, work type, language
isOpenAccess, oaStatus, oaUrl, pdfUrl, paperLicence	Open access status, free-to-read links and the paper's licence
citedByCount, citedByCountSource, referencesCount	Citations (OpenAlex, else Crossref) and references
subjects	Topics and keywords
isRetracted	true when a source flags a retraction
url	DOI link or source page
foundIn, enrichedFrom	Sources that returned the paper; sources used only to add details
changeType	new in monitor mode
licence, attribution	Licence and attribution for each source used
retrievedAt	When the run read the data

Status rows (free): invalid_doi, not_found, note, source_error, no_matches, no_new_papers or budget_reached, each with a plain-English message. If one source fails, rows from the others are kept.

The SUMMARY record in the default key-value store lists records read per source, duplicates merged, the matched author profile, request counts and the run time. The dataset has views for Overview, Open access links and Status rows.

How do I get alerts for new papers?

Set monitorMode to true, sortBy to newest, and schedule a saved task (weekly suits most topics). The Actor remembers the papers it has returned in the named key-value store stateStoreName and returns only papers it hasn't returned before, marked changeType: "new". In our test on 1 November 2026, the second run of the same monitor returned no papers, one free no_new_papers row and no charges beyond the Actor start fee.

• emitBaselineOnFirstRun (default true) returns current matches on the first run. Set it to false to remember them silently, with no paper charges.
• Use a different stateStoreName for each topic or author.

Data sources, licences and attribution

Every row carries licence and attribution for the sources used. Rows are normalised by this Actor (field names, merged duplicates, contact details removed), so they are modified from the source records. Abstracts are shared only under the paper's own open licence, shown in abstractLicence.

Source	API	Licence or terms	Attribution
OpenAlex	OpenAlex API	CC0 (public domain)	Source: OpenAlex (openalex.org), CC0.
Crossref	Crossref REST API	Crossref says almost none of its metadata is subject to copyright; some abstracts may be subject to the publisher's or author's copyright, so they are returned only under an open licence	Source: Crossref REST API.

None of the sources endorses this Actor. Paper PDFs are linked, not downloaded or copied.

Published research metadata, no contact details

Rows hold published scholarly metadata: titles, venues, openly licensed abstracts and author names, ORCID iDs and affiliations as the authors published them. Email addresses and phone numbers are removed from abstracts and affiliations. Use author data for research, citation and discovery, in line with the data protection rules that apply to you.

What are the limits?

• Sources: OpenAlex and Crossref only (no Google Scholar, Semantic Scholar or Scopus). arXiv preprints and PubMed-indexed papers are found through OpenAlex, not read from arXiv or PubMed directly.
• Abstracts: only for papers under CC0, CC BY, CC BY-SA or a public-domain licence.
• Results: up to 1,000 read per source and 10,000 returned per run. Topic search relevance is each source's own ranking; the Actor interleaves the sources' best matches.
• Citation counts come from OpenAlex (or Crossref) and differ from other citation indexes.
• Author search by name depends on OpenAlex picking the right profile; check matchedAuthor in the SUMMARY, or use an ORCID iD.
• OpenAlex without a key has a small shared daily allowance and sometimes slows down requests without a key. Short slowdowns are retried; if the allowance runs out, the run adds a free source_error row, keeps rows from the other sources, and you can add your own key.
• Pacing: Crossref one request a second, OpenAlex 4 a second, with retries after server errors.

How much does it cost to get academic papers?

Pay per event:

Event	Price
Paper returned (one deduplicated row)	$0.002
Alert run with new matches (monitor mode only, once per run that returns at least one new paper)	$0.01
Actor start	$0.00005

Status rows and the SUMMARY record are free. A monitor run with nothing new costs only the Actor start fee. Higher Apify plans get lower prices (shown on the Pricing tab). Set Maximum cost per run in the run options: the Actor stops before going over it and adds a free budget_reached row.

Use the academic papers API from code, spreadsheets or an AI agent

Run it with the Apify API or client libraries, schedule it, or connect it to Make, Zapier, Google Sheets or webhooks through Apify integrations. AI agents can call it through Apify's MCP server.

The examples below return at most 10 papers and set a maximum cost of $0.05 for the run. Read your API token from an environment variable (APIFY_TOKEN) rather than pasting it into code.

JavaScript (Node.js)

// npm install apify-client
import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

const client = new ApifyClient({ token: process.env.APIFY_TOKEN });
const run = await client.actor('yourevenings/academic-papers-api').call(
  { mode: 'search', query: 'CRISPR gene editing', yearFrom: 2023, maxResults: 10 },
  { maxTotalChargeUsd: 0.05 },
);
const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
console.log(items);

Python

# pip install "apify-client>=3"
import os
from decimal import Decimal
from apify_client import ApifyClient

client = ApifyClient(os.environ["APIFY_TOKEN"])
run = client.actor("yourevenings/academic-papers-api").call(
    run_input={"mode": "search", "query": "CRISPR gene editing", "yearFrom": 2023, "maxResults": 10},
    max_total_charge_usd=Decimal("0.05"),
)
for item in client.dataset(run.default_dataset_id).iterate_items():
    print(item)

HTTP API (cURL)

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/yourevenings~academic-papers-api/run-sync-get-dataset-items?maxTotalChargeUsd=0.05" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $APIFY_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"mode": "search", "query": "CRISPR gene editing", "yearFrom": 2023, "maxResults": 10}'

AI agents (MCP)

Add Apify's MCP server with just this Actor as a tool. On first connection your browser opens so you can sign in to Apify and approve access.

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "apify": {
      "url": "https://mcp.apify.com?tools=yourevenings/academic-papers-api"
    }
  }
}

FAQ

Do I need an API key? No. Both sources are public. An OpenAlex key is optional, for large or frequent runs.

Is this Google Scholar? No. It searches OpenAlex and Crossref, which have public APIs. OpenAlex covers a similar range of disciplines.

Why does a paper show fewer citations than elsewhere? Each index counts citations from its own set of papers. citedByCountSource says which count you have.

Why did a source return no rows? A free status row explains it: no matches, a quoted phrase not found in titles or abstracts, or a source error.

Why do some papers have no abstract? Many abstracts may be under the publisher's or author's copyright. The Actor shares one only when an openly available version of the paper is under CC0, CC BY, CC BY-SA or public domain; abstractStatus tells you which case applies.

Can I get full-text PDFs? The Actor returns pdfUrl and oaUrl links to free versions where known. It doesn't download PDFs.

Feedback

Found a problem or need a field? Open an issue on the Issues tab.