# OpenAlex Scraper (`gio21/openalex-scraper`) Actor

Scrape OpenAlex - the free open catalog of scholarly works (250M+ papers, 100M+ authors, 100K institutions). Search across works, authors, institutions, concepts, journals. Returns title, abstract, authors, citations, DOI, OA status, and more.

- **URL**: https://apify.com/gio21/openalex-scraper.md
- **Developed by:** [Gio](https://apify.com/gio21) (community)
- **Categories:** E-commerce, Developer tools, AI
- **Stats:** 2 total users, 1 monthly users, 100.0% runs succeeded, 0 bookmarks
- **User rating**: No ratings yet

## Pricing

from $2.00 / 1,000 record scrapeds

This Actor is paid per event. You are not charged for the Apify platform usage, but only a fixed price for specific events.

Learn more: https://docs.apify.com/actors/running/actors-in-store.md#pay-per-event

## What's an Apify Actor?

Actors are web data automations that power AI and operations. They run on the Apify platform to scrape websites, process data, connect APIs, and automate workflows.
In Batch mode, an Actor accepts a well-defined JSON input, performs an action which can take anything from a few seconds to a few hours,
and optionally produces a well-defined JSON output, datasets with results, or files in key-value store.
In Standby mode, an Actor provides a web server which can be used as a website, API, or an MCP server.
Actors are written with capital "A".

## How to integrate an Actor?

If asked about integration, you help developers integrate Actors into their projects.
You adapt to their stack and deliver integrations that are safe, well-documented, and production-ready.
The best way to integrate Actors is as follows.

- **AI agents and MCP clients** — the [Apify MCP server](https://docs.apify.com/integrations/mcp.md) at `https://mcp.apify.com` (remote, streamable HTTP, OAuth on first use).
- **Agentic workflows and local Actor development** — [Agent Skills](https://apify.com/.well-known/agent-skills/index.json) with the [Apify CLI](https://docs.apify.com/cli/docs.md): `npm install -g apify-cli`, then `apify login`.
- **JavaScript/TypeScript projects** — the official [JS/TS client](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/js/docs.md): `npm install apify-client`.
- **Python projects** — the official [Python client](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/python/docs.md): `pip install apify-client`.
- **Any other language** — the [REST API](https://docs.apify.com/api/v2.md).

For usage examples, see the [API](#api) section below.

For more details, see Apify documentation as [Markdown index](https://docs.apify.com/llms.txt) and [Markdown full-text](https://docs.apify.com/llms-full.txt).

# README

## OpenAlex Scraper

Scrape OpenAlex - the free open catalog of scholarly works. **250M+ papers, 100M+ authors, 100K+ institutions, 65K+ concepts, 250K+ journals.**

Five entity types:

- **works** - papers, books, datasets (title, abstract, authors, citations, DOI, OA status)
- **authors** - researchers (ORCID, h-index, i10 index, institution)
- **institutions** - universities/labs (country, works count, ROR ID)
- **concepts** - research topics
- **sources** - journals, repositories, conferences

Useful for **academic research**, **citation analysis**, **bibliometrics**, **trend detection**, **researcher discovery**.

### Free vs. paid

- **Free plan:** 10 clearly-labelled mock records.
- **Paid plan:** real, live OpenAlex data.

### Input

| Field | Type | Description |
|-------|------|-------------|
| `entity` | String (required) | `works`, `authors`, `institutions`, `concepts`, `sources`. |
| `searchTerm` | String | Free text search. |
| `filter` | String | OpenAlex filter syntax (e.g. `publication_year:2024`, `is_oa:true`, `cited_by_count:>100`). |
| `maxItems` | Integer | Default 100, max 10,000. |
| `debug` | Boolean | Verbose logs. |

### Output (works example)

```json
{
  "entityType": "work",
  "id": "https://openalex.org/W4406789012",
  "displayName": "Attention Is All You Need",
  "title": "Attention Is All You Need",
  "doi": "https://doi.org/10.48550/arxiv.1706.03762",
  "publicationYear": 2017,
  "publicationDate": "2017-06-12",
  "type": "article",
  "citedByCount": 95432,
  "isOpenAccess": true,
  "oaUrl": "https://arxiv.org/pdf/1706.03762",
  "authors": ["Ashish Vaswani", "Noam Shazeer", "..."],
  "institutions": ["Google Brain"],
  "primarySourceTitle": "arXiv (Cornell University)",
  "language": "en",
  "abstract": "The dominant sequence transduction models...",
  "concepts": ["Artificial neural network", "Transformer", "Attention"],
  "referenceCount": 28,
  "url": "https://openalex.org/W4406789012"
}
```

### Pricing

$0.002/record. 1,000 records = $2.

### Limitations

- OpenAlex API has a polite rate limit (~10 req/sec); the actor adds ~250ms between paginated calls.
- For best citation/identifier coverage, include an email in the `User-Agent` header (already set by the actor).
- `abstract` is reconstructed from OpenAlex's inverted index. Some old works don't have one.

If this actor helped you, please leave a review on the Apify Store.

# Actor input Schema

## `entity` (type: `string`):

Which OpenAlex entity to search: works (papers), authors, institutions, concepts, sources (journals).

## `searchTerm` (type: `string`):

Free text search (matches across title, abstract, fulltext for works; name for others).

## `filter` (type: `string`):

OpenAlex filter syntax (e.g. 'publication\_year:2024', 'is\_oa:true', 'cited\_by\_count:>100'). See docs.openalex.org/api-entities/works/filter-works.

## `maxItems` (type: `integer`):

Max records to return.

## `debug` (type: `boolean`):

Enable verbose logging.

## Actor input object example

```json
{
  "entity": "works",
  "searchTerm": "large language models",
  "maxItems": 100,
  "debug": false
}
```

# Actor output Schema

## `results` (type: `string`):

Full record per OpenAlex entity. Fields depend on entity type.

# API

You can run this Actor programmatically using our API. Below are code examples in JavaScript, Python, and CLI, as well as the OpenAPI specification and MCP server setup.

## JavaScript example

```javascript
import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

// Initialize the ApifyClient with your Apify API token
// Replace the '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>' with your token
const client = new ApifyClient({
    token: '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>',
});

// Prepare Actor input
const input = {
    "searchTerm": "large language models",
    "filter": "",
    "maxItems": 100
};

// Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
const run = await client.actor("gio21/openalex-scraper").call(input);

// Fetch and print Actor results from the run's dataset (if any)
console.log('Results from dataset');
console.log(`💾 Check your data here: https://console.apify.com/storage/datasets/${run.defaultDatasetId}`);
const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
items.forEach((item) => {
    console.dir(item);
});

// 📚 Want to learn more 📖? Go to → https://docs.apify.com/api/client/js/docs

```

## Python example

```python
from apify_client import ApifyClient

# Initialize the ApifyClient with your Apify API token
# Replace '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>' with your token.
client = ApifyClient("<YOUR_API_TOKEN>")

# Prepare the Actor input
run_input = {
    "searchTerm": "large language models",
    "filter": "",
    "maxItems": 100,
}

# Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
run = client.actor("gio21/openalex-scraper").call(run_input=run_input)

# Fetch and print Actor results from the run's dataset (if there are any)
print(f"💾 Check your data here: https://console.apify.com/storage/datasets/{run.default_dataset_id}")
for item in client.dataset(run.default_dataset_id).iterate_items():
    print(item)

# 📚 Want to learn more 📖? Go to → https://docs.apify.com/api/client/python/docs/quick-start

```

## CLI example

```bash
echo '{
  "searchTerm": "large language models",
  "filter": "",
  "maxItems": 100
}' |
apify call gio21/openalex-scraper --silent --output-dataset

```

## MCP server setup

```json
{
    "mcpServers": {
        "apify": {
            "type": "http",
            "url": "https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=fetch-actor-details,gio21/openalex-scraper"
        }
    }
}

```

The hosted server signs you in with OAuth on first connect, so no API token belongs in this config. Clients without OAuth support can send an `Authorization: Bearer <APIFY_API_TOKEN>` header instead, using a token from API & Integrations in Apify Console (https://console.apify.com/settings/integrations).

## OpenAPI specification

Download the OpenAPI definition: https://api.apify.com/v2/actors/AbAcI4EOfCGu29QgF/builds/kbml9y1YPca0he6Zt/openapi.json