OpenAlex API

The OpenAlex API gives you structured access to over 250 million academic works, 90 million authors, 100,000+ institutions, and millions of journals, funders, publishers, and research concepts — all in one REST surface. Maintained by OurResearch, OpenAlex is the largest fully open scholarly graph in existence. Every endpoint on Anysite costs 1 credit per request.

19 endpoints  ·  9 entity types  ·  1 credit / request

What Is the OpenAlex API?

OpenAlex is a free, open scholarly knowledge graph that indexes academic works (papers, books, datasets, preprints), their authors, the institutions they belong to, the sources they publish in (journals, repositories, conference series), the funders that supported the research, the publishers behind the sources, and the topics and concepts that describe the work. It is documented at docs.openalex.org and updated daily from Crossref, PubMed, ORCID, ROR, and other authoritative registries.

Anysite exposes the full OpenAlex catalog through 19 POST endpoints across 9 entity types. All endpoints accept JSON, return JSON, and cost 1 credit each.

All 19 Endpoints

Works

Endpoint What It Returns

Authors

Endpoint What It Returns

Institutions

Endpoint What It Returns

Sources (journals, repositories, conferences)

Endpoint What It Returns

Concepts

Endpoint What It Returns

Topics

Endpoint What It Returns

Funders

Endpoint What It Returns

Publishers

Endpoint What It Returns

Autocomplete

Endpoint What It Returns

What Can You Build with the OpenAlex API?

Literature Review Automation

Search 250M+ works by topic, date, OA status, and funder. Retrieve full abstracts, reference lists, and cited-by counts to build systematic review pipelines without manual database queries.

Author & Institution Profiling

Resolve ORCID or institution ROR to structured profiles with h-index, citation trajectories, affiliation history, and top topics — useful for grant due-diligence or faculty benchmarking tools.

Open-Access Discovery

Filter works by is_oa, oa_status, and best_oa_location to surface legal free-to-read PDFs. Build OA dashboards for libraries or research offices tracking funder compliance.

Citation Graph Analysis

Walk forward (citations) and backward (references) citation networks one hop at a time. Combine with FWCI scores and SDG tags to map research impact across disciplines and sustainable-development goals.

Quick-Start Examples

Fetch a paper by DOI:

Shell
curl -X POST https://anysite.io/api/openalex/works   -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY"   -H "Content-Type: application/json"   -d '{"doi": "10.1038/s41586-021-03964-9"}'

Search for open-access papers on climate change from 2023:

Shell
curl -X POST https://anysite.io/api/openalex/works/search   -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY"   -H "Content-Type: application/json"   -d '{
    "search": "climate change mitigation",
    "from_publication_date": "2023-01-01",
    "is_oa": true,
    "sort": "cited_by_count:desc",
    "count": 10
  }'

Cross-entity autocomplete (find anything matching "crispr"):

Shell
curl -X POST https://anysite.io/api/openalex/autocomplete   -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY"   -H "Content-Type: application/json"   -d '{"search": "crispr"}'

Plans

Every OpenAlex endpoint is included in all Anysite plans — there's no per-endpoint pricing to track. Start with MCP Unlimited at $30/mo for flat-rate access through your AI tools, or use a credit plan for REST & CLI at scale.

PlanPriceBest for
MCP Unlimited$30/moUnlimited access via Claude, Cursor & ChatGPT (fair use)
Starter$49/moREST & CLI — includes a 7-day trial
Growth$200/moProduction workloads
Scale · Pro · Enterprisefrom $300/moHigh volume & higher rate limits
See full pricing →

Frequently Asked Questions

  • What identifiers can I use to look up a work?
    The POST /api/openalex/works endpoint accepts four identifier formats: an OpenAlex W-id (e.g. W2741809807), a DOI (e.g. 10.1038/s41586-021-03964-9), a PubMed ID prefixed with pmid:, or a Microsoft Academic Graph ID prefixed with mag:. Pass whichever you have — the endpoint normalises them automatically.
  • How do I filter search results by citation count?
    The cited_by_count parameter in /works/search, /authors/search, and other search endpoints supports range syntax. Pass a string like ">100" to return only works with more than 100 citations, or "50-200" for an inclusive range. You can combine this with other filters such as from_publication_date or is_oa.
  • Does the API return open-access PDF links?
    Yes. Each work record includes is_oa, oa_status (gold, green, hybrid, bronze, closed), oa_url for the best available free URL, and a best_oa_location object with pdf_url and landing_page_url. The primary_location object provides the same fields for the canonical published version.
  • Can I get an author's full affiliation history?
    Yes. The POST /api/openalex/authors response includes an affiliations array where each entry carries the institution's OpenAlex id, ROR, display name, country code, type, and the years the author was affiliated. The last_known_institutions field surfaces the most recent affiliation quickly, without parsing the full history.
  • What is FWCI and where does it appear?
    FWCI (Field-Weighted Citation Impact) normalises a work's citation count against the average for papers in the same field, year, and document type. A score above 1.0 means the work is cited more than the field average. It appears in the POST /api/openalex/works response and is useful for comparing impact across disciplines without being biased by field-level citation norms.
  • Is the data updated in real time?
    OpenAlex updates its index daily from upstream sources including Crossref, PubMed, ORCID, and ROR. Anysite mirrors this feed, so new records typically appear within 24–48 hours of appearing in the primary OpenAlex dataset. Historical coverage goes back centuries for older publications indexed by Crossref and PubMed.

Start Querying OpenAlex Today

250 million works. 90 million authors. 1 credit per request. Sign up for a free Anysite account and start querying the world's largest open scholarly graph in minutes.

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