OpenAlex Scholarly Works
250M+ research papers, authors, and citations as structured JSON
What it does
Search 250 million scholarly papers from OpenAlex. Filter by topic, year, citations, open-access status, and type. Returns authors, venues, citation counts, and abstracts. Zero charge on empty runs.
Built in
- ✓ Search 250M+ scholarly papers
- ✓ Authors, affiliations, and citation networks
- ✓ Abstract and full venue metadata
- ✓ Open-access and DOI filtering
- ✓ Zero charge on empty runs
Guides & tutorials
OpenAlex API: 250 Million Research Papers, Free, No Rate-Limit Workarounds Needed
OpenAlex replaced the defunct Microsoft Academic Graph with 250M+ scholarly works. The API is free, well-documented, and returns structured data including citations and author affiliations.
Literature Reviews and R&D Intelligence at Scale with the OpenAlex Scraper
Search 250M+ research papers from OpenAlex as structured JSON — authors, citations, venues and abstracts
Common questions
What is OpenAlex? +
OpenAlex is a free, open catalog of 250 million scholarly works. It replaced Microsoft Academic Graph when Microsoft shut it down in 2021. It is maintained by a nonprofit and is completely free to use.
How is OpenAlex different from Google Scholar? +
Google Scholar has no API. OpenAlex has a fully documented REST API with cursor-based pagination, structured fields, and no rate limits for the polite pool (which just requires a mailto= parameter).
What data does each scholarly work include? +
Title, authors with affiliations, publication year, journal or venue, open access status and URL, abstract (where available), citation count, referenced works (what it cites), and concept tags.
Is there a bulk download option? +
Yes. OpenAlex publishes monthly data snapshots as gzipped JSON files on AWS S3. For large-scale pulls (millions of records), the snapshot is faster than the API. For targeted queries, the API is the right tool.
What is the polite pool? +
OpenAlex separates traffic into a fast polite pool and a slower default pool. To join the polite pool (5 requests per second), include mailto=your@email.com in every API request.
Try it on Apify.
Free tier on Apify with 100 results included. No credit card required.