Do I need an API key?

No! OpenAlex is completely free and does not require an API key for basic access. You can optionally get a free key for higher rate limits.

Is there a rate limit?

Yes: 100,000 requests per day without a key, and 1,000,000 requests per day with a free API key.

What kind of data is available?

Over 250 million scholarly works including papers, theses, and books, plus authors, institutions, venues, funders, concepts/topics, and citation data.

OpenAlex - Free Scholarly Works API No API Key

TL;DR

What it does: Search 250+ million scholarly works (papers, theses, books) with authors, citations, institutions, and topics — no API key required.

Quick start: https://api.openalex.org/works?per_page=1

No API key needed - just call the URL

Overview

OpenAlex is a free, open catalog of the world's scholarly research. Named after the ancient Library of Alexandria, it indexes over 250 million works including academic papers, theses, books, and datasets. You can search by title, author, institution, topic, and more. The API is completely free and does not require authentication for basic access. It provides rich metadata including citation counts, open access status, authorship details, institutional affiliations, and topic classifications.

Live Example

Here's the exact URL to call and the real response you'll get:

The URL to call (single work):

https://api.openalex.org/works?per_page=1

Try This URL Now →

The actual response you get:

{
  "meta": {
    "count": 316775762,
    "db_response_time_ms": 149,
    "page": 1,
    "per_page": 1
  },
  "results": [
    {
      "id": "https://openalex.org/W3038568908",
      "title": "Radiation Resistant Camera System for Monitoring Deuterium Plasma Discharges in the Large Helical Device",
      "display_name": "Radiation Resistant Camera System for Monitoring Deuterium Plasma Discharges in the Large Helical Device",
      "publication_year": 2020,
      "publication_date": "2020-06-08",
      "language": "en",
      "type": "article",
      "open_access": {
        "is_oa": true,
        "oa_status": "diamond"
      },
      "cited_by_count": 801217,
      "primary_location": {
        "source": {
          "display_name": "Plasma and Fusion Research",
          "issn_l": "1880-6821"
        }
      },
      "authorships": [
        {
          "author": {
            "display_name": "M. Shoji"
          },
          "institutions": [
            {
              "display_name": "National Institutes of Natural Sciences",
              "country_code": "JP"
            }
          ]
        }
      ],
      "primary_topic": {
        "display_name": "Magnetic confinement fusion research",
        "subfield": {
          "display_name": "Nuclear and High Energy Physics"
        }
      }
    }
  ]
}

What does this data mean?

This query searched all works and returned the most relevant result — a 2020 paper on fusion research authored by M. Shoji, cited over 800,000 times, published in an open-access diamond journal.

meta.count: Total number of works in OpenAlex: 316,775,762 (and growing daily!)
meta.per_page: How many results we asked for: 1 (you can request up to 200 per page)
results[].id: The permanent OpenAlex ID for this work: https://openalex.org/W3038568908. Use this to link directly to the work.
results[].title / display_name: The title of the scholarly work — "Radiation Resistant Camera System for Monitoring Deuterium Plasma Discharges in the Large Helical Device"
results[].publication_year: The year this work was published: 2020
results[].cited_by_count: How many times this work has been cited by other scholarly works: 801,217 citations
results[].type: The type of scholarly work: "article". Other types include "book", "chapter", "dissertation", "dataset", "report", and more.
results[].open_access.oa_status: Open access status: "diamond" means it's free to read and publish with no fees. Other statuses: "gold", "green", "hybrid", "bronze", or "closed".
results[].primary_topic.display_name: The main topic of this work: "Magnetic confinement fusion research" in the subfield of "Nuclear and High Energy Physics"

How to use this API

JavaScript Example

// Search for works about "machine learning" published after 2023
const url = 'https://api.openalex.org/works?search=machine%20learning&filter=publication_year:2024&sort=cited_by_count:desc&per_page=5';

fetch(url)
  .then(res => res.json())
  .then(data => {
    console.log(`Total works found: ${data.meta.count}`);
    data.results.forEach(work => {
      console.log(`- ${work.title} (${work.publication_year}, cited ${work.cited_by_count} times)`);
    });
  });

Python Example

import requests

# Search for works about "machine learning" published after 2023
url = "https://api.openalex.org/works"
params = {
    "search": "machine learning",
    "filter": "publication_year:2024",
    "sort": "cited_by_count:desc",
    "per_page": 5
}

response = requests.get(url, params=params)
data = response.json()

print(f"Total works found: {data['meta']['count']}")
for work in data['results']:
    print(f"- {work['title']} ({work['publication_year']}, cited {work['cited_by_count']} times)")

Frequently Asked Questions

Do I need an API key?: No! OpenAlex is completely free and does not require an API key for basic access. You can optionally register for a free API key to get higher rate limits (1M/day instead of 100k/day) and access to more features.
Is there a rate limit?: Yes: 100,000 requests per day without a key, and 1,000,000 requests per day with a free API key. If you exceed the limit, you'll receive a 429 Too Many Requests response.
What kind of data is available?: Over 250 million scholarly works (papers, theses, books, datasets), plus authors, institutions, venues (journals), publishers, funders, concepts/topics, and citation relationships between works. You can search by title, abstract, author name, institution, topic, and year ranges.
How do I paginate through results?: Use the page parameter (&page=2) or cursor-based pagination with &cursor=* for deep pagination beyond 10,000 results. Results per page max is 200 using &per_page=200.
Can I use this commercially?: Yes, OpenAlex data is available under a CC0 license (public domain). You can use it for commercial products, research, or any purpose without restrictions.
How do I search by author or institution?: Use filter parameters like &filter=authorships.author.display_name:Einstein for authors or &filter=authorships.institutions.display_name:MIT for institutions. Check the docs for all filter options.

API Details

Base URL: https://api.openalex.org/works
Documentation: https://docs.openalex.org/
Category: Academic
Authentication: None required - free access without key
Rate Limit: 100k requests/day without key, 1M/day with free key
Geographic Coverage: Global - scholarly works from all countries