openalex

Research

OpenAlex — free, comprehensive scholarly graph (works, authors, sources/journals, institutions, topics, concepts, funders). Search papers by keyword/filter/sort, fetch a single entity by ID, look up author profiles, institutions, citation networks. Use whenever the user asks about papers, citation counts, author publications, institution outputs, or research topics. Lower-friction alternative to Semantic Scholar / Web of Science / Scopus.

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OpenAlex

Overview

OpenAlex is a free index of >250M scholarly works built atop the Microsoft Academic Graph's successor. No API key required for the polite pool. Optional OPENALEX_EMAIL / USER_EMAIL env var → priority routing; OPENALEX_API_KEY env var → premium pool with higher limits.

Project Tools (VenusFactory2)

Tool	Args	Returns	Description
download_openalex_entries_by_query	`entity_type` (required: `works` \| `authors` \| `sources` \| `institutions` \| `topics` \| `concepts` \| `publishers` \| `funders` \| ...), `out_dir`, `search` (free-text keyword), `filter_expr` (OpenAlex filter syntax, e.g. `authorships.author.id:A123,publication_year:>2020`), `sort` (e.g. `cited_by_count:desc`), `per_page` (default 25, max 200), `page` (default 1), `timeout`	rich JSON envelope; saved JSON page at `file_info.file_path`; `biological_metadata.total_count` + `result_count` + `next_page` hint	Search OpenAlex.
download_openalex_entry_by_id	`entity_type`, `openalex_id` (e.g. `W3177828909`, `A5089215617`, or full openalex.org URL), `out_dir`, `timeout`	rich JSON envelope; full entity JSON at `file_info.file_path`; `biological_metadata` extracts `display_name`, `cited_by_count`, `publication_year`, `doi`	Fetch a single entity by ID.

When to Use This Skill

"Find papers about X" / "what's the most cited paper on Y" → search works with sort=cited_by_count:desc
"Who is the most prolific author in topic X" → search authors with filter_expr=topics.id:T...
"Get me the full record for [DOI/work ID]" → download_openalex_entry_by_id on works
"What's institution X publishing about lately" → search works with filter_expr=authorships.institutions.id:I...,publication_year:2024

Filter Syntax Cheatsheet

Filters are comma-separated for AND, | inside a value for OR. Examples:

Filter	Effect
`publication_year:2023`	exact year
`publication_year:>2020`	year > 2020
`from_publication_date:2023-01-01`	inclusive lower bound
`cited_by_count:>100`	well-cited papers
`authorships.author.id:A5089215617`	papers by a given author
`authorships.institutions.id:I4210090411`	papers from a given institution (`I4210090411` = DeepMind)
`topics.id:T11444`	papers in a specific topic
`is_oa:true`	open access only
`type:journal-article`	filter by work type
`doi:10.1038/s41586-021-03819-2`	exact DOI lookup

ID Prefixes

W = Work (paper)
A = Author
S = Source (journal/conference/book/repo)
I = Institution
T = Topic
C = Concept
P = Publisher
F = Funder

Pagination

Set per_page ≤ 200 and walk page=1, 2, ... until biological_metadata.next_page is None.
For deep paging (>10k results), use OpenAlex's cursor pagination instead — out of scope for this tool; download the first page, inspect meta.next_cursor, then drive the cursor manually.

Common Mistakes

per_page=1000: max is 200. Set to 200 then paginate.
Wrong entity prefix: download_openalex_entry_by_id(entity_type='works', openalex_id='A123...') will 404 — the prefix A says author, not work.
Filtering without an entity context: filter_expr=author.id:A123 makes no sense for entity_type=authors (use id:A123 instead).
Free-text vs filter confusion: search="cited_by_count desc" won't sort — use the sort parameter.

References

OpenAlex docs
Entity-type filter ref (one page per entity type)
Get an OpenAlex API key (optional)