OpenAlex documentation
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API
Query the OpenAlex dataset using the magic of The Internet
The API is the primary way to get OpenAlex data. It's free, requires no authentication, and has generous rate limits; it's also much cheaper and easier than downloading and using the snapshot. So for most use cases, this is what you're looking for.
Entity endpoints
These are the main endpoints for the API. There are five entity endpoints, one for each entity type:
/works/authors/venues/institutions/concepts
Each of these can give you either a single entity, or a list of entities. In either case, the entities are returned as entity objects.
Get single entities
To get a single entity, just feed an ID to the relevant endpoint:
/<endpoint_name>/<id>. Examples:- Get the work with the OpenAlex ID
https://openalex.org/W2741809807: https://api.openalex.org/works/W2741809807​ - Get the author with the ORCID
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6187-6610: https://api.openalex.org/authors/https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6187-6610​
Get lists of entities
To get a list of entities, just query the relevant endpoint directly:
/<endpoint_name>. You can add parameters to filter, sort, search, and group results. Examples:- Get works with "coffee" in their titles:
https://api.openalex.org/works?filter=title.search:coffee​
These list queries give you a very powerful and fast interface into the OpenAlex dataset. For lots more detail on these, see Get lists of entities and Get groups of entities.
Authentication
The OpenAlex API doesn't require authentication. However, it is helpful for us to know who's behind each API call, for two reasons:
- It allows us to get in touch with the user if something's gone wrong--for instance, their script has run amok and we've needed to start blocking or throttling a their usage.
- It lets us report back to our funders, which helps us keep the lights on.
Like Crossref (whose approach we are shamelessly stealing), we prefer carrots to sticks for this. So, depending on your preferences, you'll be in one of two API pools:
The polite pool
The polite pool has much faster and more consistent response times. It's a good place to be.
To get into the polite pool, you just have to give us an email where we can contact you. You can give us this email in one of two ways:
- Add the
[email protected]parameter in your API request, like this: https://api.openalex.org/[email protected]​ - Add
mailto:[email protected]somewhere in your User-Agent request header.
The common pool
The common pool has slower and less consistent response times. It's a less good place to be. We encourage everyone to get in the polite pool ​​
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Rate limits
The API doesn't have rate limits. However, in our first few weeks, we'd appreciate it if everyone kept it to under 100,000 calls per day. That will give us a chance to see how many users we may need to be supporting, and scale our infrastructure accordingly.
If you need more than 100,000 calls per day, please drop us a line at [email protected]
Usage tips
Calling the API in your browser
Because the API is all GET requests without fancy authentication, you can view any request in your browser. This is a very useful and pleasant way to explore the API and debug scripts; we use it all the time.
However, this is much nicer if you install an extension to pretty-print the JSON; JSONVue (Chrome) and JSONView (Firefox) are popular, free choices.
A lot prettier than cURL
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Last modified 17d ago