OpenAlex
OpenAlex is an open catalogue of scholarly works, authors, institutions and journals released under CC0. Through ScholarMuse an agent can search OpenAlex works by keyword, look up one paper by DOI, PMID, arXiv id or OpenAlex id, check a reference list or a set of DOIs against it, and pull a journal's profile by name or ISSN.
ScholarMuse tools: search_papers, get_paper, verify_references, check_retractions, journal_info. Each successful call uses credits.
The web tools run without an account, up to 5 runs a day per visitor.
Ask your agent
What your agent gets back
Every record carries id, source, title, url, license, attribution and retrievedAt. The fields below are the data that comes from OpenAlex.
search_papers
OpenAlex is one of the three sources searched by default. Results from all sources are interleaved and de-duplicated by DOI.
- doi
- DOI without the doi.org prefix
- authors
- Author names, first 12
- year
- Publication year
- date
- Publication date
- venue
- Journal or repository of the primary location
- type
- OpenAlex work type, such as article or preprint
- citedBy
- Citation count in OpenAlex
- retracted
- OpenAlex retraction flag
- openAccess
- Whether OpenAlex marks the work as open access
- openAccessUrl
- Open-access URL when OpenAlex has one
- abstract
- Abstract text, cut at 2,000 characters
get_paper
OpenAlex is asked first for DOIs, PMIDs, arXiv ids and OpenAlex ids. Other sources answer only when it has no record.
- doi
- DOI without the doi.org prefix
- authors
- Author names, first 12
- year
- Publication year
- venue
- Journal or repository of the primary location
- type
- OpenAlex work type
- citedBy
- Citation count in OpenAlex
- retracted
- OpenAlex retraction flag
- openAccess
- Whether the work is open access
- openAccessUrl
- Open-access URL when one is known
- abstract
- Abstract text, cut at 2,000 characters
verify_references
Each reference is matched against Crossref and OpenAlex together. OpenAlex contributes its retraction flag and citation count, and resolves PMIDs and arXiv ids.
- status
- verified, corrected, not_found or uncertain
- matchedBy
- How the match was made: doi, pmid, arxiv or title
- titleSimilarity
- Title similarity between cited and found, 0 to 1
- corrections
- Fields that differ, with cited and found values
- retracted
- True when Crossref or OpenAlex flags a retraction
- matched
- Metadata of the matched paper, with its sources
- notes
- Plain-language remarks on the check
check_retractions
OpenAlex adds a second retraction flag next to the Crossref notices. A flag from OpenAlex alone is reported with a note to confirm it on the publisher page.
- status
- retracted, expression_of_concern, corrected, no_notice or not_found
- retracted
- Combined retraction verdict
- openalexRetracted
- OpenAlex's own retraction flag for the DOI
- year
- Publication year
- journal
- Journal name
- notes
- Remarks, such as which source flagged it
journal_info
Read from OpenAlex sources and merged with the DOAJ entry when the journal is listed there.
- issnL
- Linking ISSN
- issns
- All ISSNs of the journal
- publisher
- Host organisation name
- type
- OpenAlex source type, such as journal or repository
- openAccess
- Whether the journal is fully open access
- worksCount
- Works indexed in OpenAlex
- citedByCount
- Citations to those works
- hIndex
- Journal h-index from OpenAlex
- firstPublicationYear
- Year of the first indexed work
- lastPublicationYear
- Year of the latest indexed work
- signals
- Plain-language facts about the journal
- otherMatches
- Other journals that matched the name
What it covers
- Scholarly works across all disciplines: journal articles, preprints, books and other types that OpenAlex indexes.
- Journals, repositories and conference series through OpenAlex sources, looked up by name or ISSN.
- Paper search can be narrowed by publication year range and to open-access works.
Limits
- search_papers returns at most 25 papers per call, shared across all sources searched.
- Abstracts are cut at 2,000 characters and author lists at 12 names. No full text is returned.
- Author, institution, topic and citation-graph lookups are not exposed. Only works and sources are queried.
- journal_info returns one journal per call and does not return the Journal Impact Factor.
How ScholarMuse reaches OpenAlex
The connector calls api.openalex.org directly: /works for paper search and single-work lookup, /sources for journals. It sends an OpenAlex API key as a bearer token when one is configured on the server, and works without one.
Paper searches are cached for up to 6 hours, single works and journal name searches for up to 1 day, and journal lookups by ISSN for up to 7 days, so new citation counts can lag by that long.
API key: the upstream API can be called without one, so you do not add one.
Licence and attribution
Licence: CC0-1.0
Data from OpenAlex (openalex.org), CC0.
Records that come from OpenAlex carry this licence and attribution. When you cite the data in a paper, follow OpenAlex's own citation guidance.
