Counting

Recipes for counting things in OpenAlex. For building the result set you’re counting, see Searching; for the full querying story, start with Querying.

How do I count all the citations to a set of results?

For any result set — whatever searches and filters you’ve applied — add the citations sum facet under Stats (click “+” next to Stats → citations sum). It shows the total citations received by every work in the set. Divide by the number of results for the average citations per work.

How do I check whether a journal’s works are in OpenAlex?

Search for the journal by name and click it — that filters to works whose primary location is that journal, so you can browse its coverage. If the name doesn’t turn it up, search by ISSN instead. Still nothing? Get in touch.

Why do the counts-by-year numbers differ from what I see in the interface?

The counts_by_year, works_count, and cited_by_count numbers nested inside an entity (an author, institution, or source) are precomputed and refreshed only every few months, so they drift — especially for entities that publish a lot. A live works query is always current, which is why the two can disagree. If you need an exact count, run a works search filtered by the entity (e.g. openalex.org/works?filter=authorships.author.id:A5086928770) instead of reading the nested number. Full explanation: Counts by year.