How-to guides
Short, practical guides to the most common OpenAlex tasks.
Each guide here answers one practical question — finding an ID, fixing a bad record, getting your journal indexed — in a few minutes of reading. If you want a worked, end-to-end walkthrough of a whole project instead, head to the Tutorials.
Searching
Finding OpenAlex IDs: Click any entity and read its ID straight off the URL bar — one scheme covers everything.Searching: Most-cited lists, top-100 thresholds, excluding retractions, and the query-length ceiling.Counting: Citation totals for any result set, coverage checks, and why two counts disagree.
Working with data
API recipes: Live URLs you paste into a browser: filter, group, sample, batch-fetch — mostly under 1¢.Integrations: Export to VOSviewer, wire up your link resolver, or spot OA copies as you browse.Analyzing your institution: One search plus the Stats panel: outputs by subject, SDG, and OA — even your APC spend.
Fixing errors
Fixing authors: No ticket needed — claim it and fix it yourself: works, name variants, merged twins.Fixing affiliations: “The affiliations are wrong” is two different bugs — the fix depends on which one you have.Fixing data errors: File a ticket; AI agents verify and apply the fix. Four things make a report move fast.