Search 250M+ academic papers, authors, and institutions — completely free, no API key needed.
OpenAlex is the largest open catalog of scholarly works. Think of it as a free, open alternative to Google Scholar with a proper API.
- 250M+ works (papers, articles, books)
- 100K+ journals and conferences
- 90M+ authors with h-index and citation data
- No API key required
- No rate limits (polite pool)
import requests
# Search for papers
resp = requests.get("https://api.openalex.org/works", params={
"search": "large language models",
"sort": "cited_by_count:desc",
"per_page": 5
})
for work in resp.json()["results"]:
print(f"[{work['publication_year']}] {work['title']}")
print(f" Citations: {work['cited_by_count']}")resp = requests.get("https://api.openalex.org/authors", params={
"search": "Geoffrey Hinton", "per_page": 1
})
author = resp.json()["results"][0]
print(f"Works: {author['works_count']}, Citations: {author['cited_by_count']}")# Find papers that cite a specific work
resp = requests.get("https://api.openalex.org/works", params={
"filter": "cites:W2741809807", # Attention Is All You Need
"sort": "cited_by_count:desc",
"per_page": 5
})
for p in resp.json()["results"]:
print(f" {p['title']} ({p['cited_by_count']} citations)")| Endpoint | Returns | Example |
|---|---|---|
| /works | Papers | search=machine+learning |
| /authors | Researchers | search=Yann+LeCun |
| /institutions | Universities | country_code=US |
| /concepts | Topics | works_count:>10000 |
| /venues | Journals | search=Nature |
| /funders | Grants | search=NSF |
OpenAlex API: Search 250M+ Academic Papers for Free
I build custom scrapers, data pipelines, and automation tools — delivered in 48 hours for $250 flat rate.
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MIT