OpenAlex — Free Open Scholarly Works API (No Key)

TL;DR

OpenAlex is a free, open catalog of 250+ million scholarly works including papers, theses, books, and datasets. Index works from 250,000+ sources with linked authors, institutions, funders, citations, concepts, and open access status. Each work is enriched with citation counts, referenced works, topical concepts (using Wikidata), and locations (journals, repositories). No API key required for 100k requests/day.

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

No API key needed — free and open scholarly data!

How to Use This API

1. Get a Random Work

Returns a random scholarly work with full metadata:

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

2. Search Works by Title or Abstract

https://api.openalex.org/works?search=machine+learning+climate

3. Get an Author and Their Works

https://api.openalex.org/authors/A2110321928

4. JavaScript — Search and Summarize

fetch('https://api.openalex.org/works?search=transformer+neural+network&per_page=5')
  .then(r => r.json())
  .then(data => {
    console.log(`Found ${data.meta.count} results`);
    data.results.forEach(work => {
      console.log(work.title);
      console.log(`  Authors: ${work.authorships?.length}`);
      console.log(`  Citations: ${work.cited_by_count}`);
      console.log(`  OA: ${work.open_access?.is_oa ? 'Yes' : 'No'}`);
    });
  });

5. Python — Filter by Year and Concept

import requests

resp = requests.get(
    'https://api.openalex.org/works',
    params={
        'filter': 'publication_year:2024,concept.id:C154945302',
        'sort': 'cited_by_count:desc',
        'per_page': 10
    }
).json()

print(f"Top papers on AI in 2024 ({resp['meta']['count']} total):")
for work in resp['results'][:5]:
    print(f"  {work['title'][:70]}... — {work['cited_by_count']} cites")

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

Try This URL Now

Frequently Asked Questions

What entities does OpenAlex index?: Five main entity types: works (papers, books, datasets), authors, sources (journals, repositories), institutions, and concepts (topics from Wikidata).
How do I search effectively?: Use search for full-text search of titles and abstracts. Use filter for structured filtering by year, author, concept, institution, open access status, and more. Combine with sort and per_page.
What are concepts and how are they assigned?: Concepts are topics from Wikidata assigned to works using a machine learning model. Each concept has an ID, name, and relevance score. Filter by concept ID to get works on specific topics.
Is there a rate limit?: 100,000 requests per day without an API key. Register for a free API key to get 1,000,000 requests per day. No concurrency limits beyond being reasonable.
Does it include open access links to full text?: Yes — the open_access field indicates if a work is OA and provides the oa_url (link to free full text) and oa_status (gold, green, hybrid, bronze, closed).
How does OpenAlex compare to other scholarly APIs?: OpenAlex is free and open, unlike some commercial alternatives. It covers more works and entities than most free alternatives. Data is updated weekly and released under CC0 license.

API Details

API URL: https://api.openalex.org/
Documentation: docs.openalex.org
Category: Academic
Authentication: Not Required (optional free key for higher limits)
Rate Limit: 100k/day (no key), 1M/day (free key)

What You Can Build

Research paper recommender based on concept similarity and citations
Author impact dashboard showing citation trends and collaborations
Literature review tool aggregating papers by topic and year
Open access checker finding free full-text versions of paywalled papers
Institution research output analyzer by department and field