About us

What is OpenAlex?

At the heart of OpenAlex is our dataset—a catalog of works. A work is any sort of scholarly output. A research article is one kind of work, but there are others such as datasets, books, and dissertations. We keep track of these works—their titles (and abstracts and full text in many cases), when they were created, etc. But that's not all we do. We also keep track of the connections between these works, finding associations through things like journals, authors, institutional affiliations, citations, concepts, and funders. There are hundreds of millions of works out there, and tens of thousands more being created every day, so it's important that we have these relationships to help us make sense of research at a large scale.

This type of data is a valuable resource to institutions, researchers, governments, publishers, funders, and anyone else interested in global research and scholarly communication. We offer the data freely so that its value can be shared. Using the website, anyone can get started right away exploring the data to learn about all sorts of things, from individual papers, to global research trends.

Who are we?

OurResearch is a nonprofit that builds tools for Open Science, including OpenAlex, Unpaywall, and Unsub, among others. Our open-source tools are used by millions every day, in universities, businesses, and libraries worldwide, to uncover, connect, and analyze research products.

Openness is one of our core values, and so we strive to bake it into everything we do—including our data, code, software, and organizational practices. This is also why OpenAlex is completely open-source and free to use under the CC0 license.

Why OpenAlex?

OpenAlex offers an open replacement for industry-standard scientific knowledge bases like Elsevier's Scopus and Clarivate's Web of Science. Compared to these paywalled services, OpenAlex offers significant advantages in terms of inclusivity, affordability, and availability.

OpenAlex is:

• Big — We strive to be as comprehensive and inclusive as possible, especially for works in other languages and the Global South.

• Easy — Our service is fast, modern, and well-documented.

• Open — Our complete dataset is free under the CC0 license, which allows for transparency and reuse.

We believe the global research system is one of humankind's most beautiful creations. OpenAlex aims to make that whole beautiful creation available to everyone, everywhere.

Many people and organizations have already found great value using OpenAlex. Have a look at the Testimonials to hear what they've said!

Past and future

Let's start way back at the beginning, with the ancient Library of Alexandria. Working to create a Universal Library, they didn't just gather knowledge — they made it useful by indexing it in the world's first library catalog, the Pinakes. That's what we're trying to do, too, and so our name is an homage to them!

Fast forward a few millenia: OpenAlex had been a dream at our little nonprofit for a long time, but two doors opened simultaneously in May 2021. First, we received a generous grant from Arcadia. Second, Microsoft announced it would shutter Microsoft Academic Graph (MAG), which much of the community has come to rely upon as our best index of scholarly communication. So, we had the means and the opportunity, and we ran with it!

OpenAlex beta launched on January 3rd, 2022. The data is available via an API and a full database snapshot, and the web application to search and explore the data launched in beta October, 2023.

Team

Learn about our small, highly dedicated team here.

Acknowledgements

We'd like to thank everyone behind all our data sources, but especially the folks at MAG for building a really audacious and cool thing, and providing us lots of help and support as we build its replacement.