OpenAlex Scholarly Works Scraper
Search 250M+ OpenAlex papers by keyword. Get titles, authors, venue, year, citations, concepts, OA links and full abstracts as structured JSON. No API key.
How it works
- 1Open it on Apify
Hit Run on Apify — it opens the tool in the cloud, no install.
- 2Set the inputs
Adjust
query,sort,fromDate(sensible defaults are pre-filled). - 3Click Run
The tool runs on Apify’s cloud and collects the data for you.
- 4Export the results
Download as JSON, CSV or Excel, or pipe straight into your app, Google Sheets, or an AI agent.
Pricing
$0.002 per work = $2 per 1,000
| You are charged for | When | Price |
|---|---|---|
| Work returned | Charged per scholarly work returned. | $0.002 |
Pay-per-event pricing: you are billed per result, not per subscription — a run that returns nothing costs nothing beyond the start fee. Billing is handled by Apify on your own account. These are the live Apify store prices, in effect since 2026-06-13, and they are what you are actually charged.
Inputs
| Field | What it does | Type |
|---|---|---|
query | Keywords to search OpenAlex works for (title, abstract and fulltext are searched), e.g. "machine learning", "crispr gene editing". Required. | string |
sort | How to order results: Relevance (best match for the query), Citations (most-cited first), or Date (newest first). | string |
fromDate | Optional. Only return works published on or after this date (YYYY-MM-DD, e.g. 2023-01-01). Adds a from_publication_date filter. | string |
filter | Optional advanced filter passed straight to the OpenAlex API filter param. Comma-separated key:value pairs, e.g. "type:article,is_oa:true,from_publication_date:2023-01-01". See the OpenAlex docs for available filter keys. Merged with From publication date. | string |
maxItems | Maximum number of works to return. Cursor pagination fetches 50 per page until this many unique works are collected. | integer |
notionConnector | Optional. Write each result as a page into your Notion when the run finishes. Authorize a Notion connector once in Settings → API & Integrations → MCP connectors, then pick it here. Leave empty to skip (default) — results are always saved to the dataset regardless. | string |
notionParentId | Optional. The Notion data source ID of the database to write into (only used if a Notion connector is set). Leave empty to create the pages privately in your workspace instead. | string |
What you get
A structured dataset — each result includes fields like:
abstractauthorscitationsconceptsdoiinstitutionsisOpenAccessoaUrlopenalexIdpublicationDatetitletypeurlvenueyearExport every run as JSON, CSV or Excel, or send it to your app, a database, Google Sheets, or an AI agent.
2 ready-to-run use cases
Latest CRISPR Papers from OpenAlex, Newest First
Track CRISPR gene-editing research on OpenAlex sorted newest first, with authors, journal, citation counts, and full abstracts for each work.
Top-Cited Deep Learning Papers from OpenAlex
The foundational deep learning reading list, ranked by citation count from OpenAlex with authors, venue, and abstracts for literature reviews and ML research.
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Where this tool sits
- Categories
- Developer & Research Tools
- Platforms
- Academic & Research
OpenAlex Scholarly Works Scraper
Search the OpenAlex catalog of 250M+ scholarly works and get clean, structured records — no API key, no login. OpenAlex is a free, open index of scholarship (an open replacement for Microsoft Academic Graph / Scopus).
This actor calls the public OpenAlex works endpoint, walks results with cursor pagination (the reliable way past the first couple hundred), reconstructs each abstract from its inverted index into readable text, and returns one flat row per work.
It is a polite API citizen: every request carries a contact mailto (both as a query param and in the User-Agent), which routes traffic to OpenAlex's faster, more reliable "polite pool".
Input
| Field | Type | Default | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
query | string | — (required) | Keywords to search (title, abstract, fulltext), e.g. machine learning. |
sort | string | relevance | relevance, citations (most cited first), or date (newest first). |
fromDate | string | — | Optional YYYY-MM-DD; only works published on/after this date. |
filter | string | — | Optional raw OpenAlex filter, e.g. type:article,is_oa:true. Merged with fromDate. |
maxItems | integer | 100 | Max works to return (50 fetched per page via cursor). |
proxyConfiguration | object | { "useApifyProxy": false } | Optional. Not needed — OpenAlex is a clean public API. |
Example input
{
"query": "crispr",
"sort": "citations",
"fromDate": "2020-01-01",
"maxItems": 120
}Output
One row per work:
{
"ok": true,
"openalexId": "https://openalex.org/W...",
"doi": "https://doi.org/10....",
"title": "…",
"authors": ["Jane Doe", "John Roe"],
"institutions": ["Some University"],
"year": 2021,
"publicationDate": "2021-05-03",
"type": "article",
"venue": "Nature",
"citations": 1234,
"concepts": ["Biology", "Genetics"],
"isOpenAccess": true,
"oaUrl": "https://…pdf",
"abstract": "Reconstructed abstract text…",
"url": "https://openalex.org/W..."
}abstract is rebuilt from OpenAlex's abstract_inverted_index; when no abstract is indexed it is null. Results are deduplicated by openalexId.
Pricing
$2.00 per 1,000 works ($0.002 each), with no run-start fee. Flat rate — no volume tiers, no plan gates — and you are charged only for work rows actually returned.
The reconstructed abstract is included at that price; there is no separate fee for it, and no extra request is made to get it (OpenAlex ships the inverted index inside the same record). A 120-work literature sweep with full abstracts costs $0.24.
Diagnostics & billing
On failure or no results, the actor pushes a single diagnostic row (ok:false) with an errorCode (BAD_INPUT, NO_RESULTS, RATE_LIMITED, SERVER_ERROR, NETWORK) instead of failing silently. Only successful work rows are charged (one work unit each) — diagnostics and empty results are never billed, and with no start fee a failed run costs nothing at all.
Data source
Data comes from OpenAlex, released under CC0. Please cite OpenAlex when you use it.