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OpenAlex

OpenAlex
United States of America
Website (Opens in new window) Pricing (Opens in new window) Get in Touch (Opens in new window)

About

Launched: 2022
Record Updated: Sep 25, 2026
Discovery system
Open scholarly dataset
OpenAlex is a free and open catalog of the global research system: 474 million scholarly works (articles, preprints, datasets, books, dissertations and more), linked to 121 million author profiles, 257,000 sources, 140,000 institutions, 45,000 funders and 17 million awards, and organised into 4,500 topics. It is built from open sources such as Crossref, DataCite, PubMed, Europe PMC, ORCID, ROR, DOAJ and thousands of repositories harvested via OAI-PMH, with our own parsing, disambiguation and classification on top. All data is CC0 and all code is MIT. Access it through the web application at openalex.org (search, filters, group-by analytics, exports), a REST API with a free daily budget for every account, daily incremental snapshots for keeping a local copy in sync, and a full bulk download. OpenAlex powers the Leiden Ranking Open Edition, Unpaywall, Unsub and many institutional research-intelligence and open-access monitoring workflows.
Research Organization Registry (Opens in new window)

Domain Relevance

  • Generalist (no disciplinary-focus)

Mission

Our mission is to make the global research system (the interconnected web of works, authors, institutions, sources, funders, awards and topics) available to everyone, everywhere: free to use, open to build on, and run by a nonprofit that keeps the data open.

Key Achievements

Adoption: the CWTS Leiden Ranking Open Edition is built entirely on OpenAlex data, and from 2027 it will be the only edition of the Leiden Ranking. Universities, ministries, funders and publishers use OpenAlex for research intelligence and open-access monitoring; more than 100 institutions, agencies and companies now sustain OpenAlex as paying Members, Members+ and Partners (openalex.org/institutional-supporters).

Product: a complete rewrite of the OpenAlex codebase (late 2025) lets us ship data-quality improvements in days. In 2026 we launched semantic and advanced search, a Content API over 60M+ open-access PDFs, daily incremental snapshots, and awards data ingested from 30+ funders worldwide (backed by a $3.6M Wellcome grant), plus major upgrades to author disambiguation and work-type classification.

Governance: an elected Community Advisory Board with public terms, quarterly public town halls, and a fresh POSI self-assessment (March 2026).

Technical Attributes

Maintenance Status

Actively Maintained

Open Code Repository

Implemented
GitHub organization (all repositories, MIT) (Opens in new window)

Technical Documentation

Implemented
Help Center and API documentation (Opens in new window)

Code License

Implemented
MIT License (Opens in new window)

Open API

Implemented
API documentation (api.openalex.org) (Opens in new window)

Open Data Statement

Implemented
Open data and transparency statement (Opens in new window)

Open Product Roadmap

Implemented
Quarterly town hall roadmap and retro notes (Opens in new window)

Technical Attribute Statements

Programming Languages

  • javascript
  • python

Technology Readiness Level

  • Actual system proven in operational environment

Code Licenses Used

  • MIT License

Content Licensing

  • Other
CC0 1.0 public domain dedication (all OpenAlex data)

Standards

Metadata

  • JSON
  • OAI-PMH
  • REST
Other:
JSON via REST API and daily JSON Lines snapshots; CSV and JSON exports; repositories harvested via OAI-PMH.

Persistent Identifier

  • ORCiD
  • Research Organization Registry
Other:
DOI, ISSN and ISSN-L, PMID, PMCID, Wikidata, OpenAlex IDs

Hosting Options

  • Through solution only

Integrations

  • arXiv
  • bioRxiv
  • CORE
  • Crossref
  • DataCite
  • Dataverse
  • Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ)
  • DSpace
  • ePrints
  • Europe PMC
  • medrXiv
  • Open Journal Systems (OJS)
  • Research Organization Registry (ROR)
  • Zenodo
  • Other
Other:
Thousands of institutional and subject repositories worldwide, harvested via OAI-PMH, plus PubMed, ORCID and the ISSN Centre. Unpaywall and Unsub are built on OpenAlex data.

Community Engagement

Community Engagement

Implemented

Contribution Guidelines or Fora

Implemented
GitHub (code and documentation) (Opens in new window) OpenAlex users mailing list (Opens in new window)

Community Statements

User Contribution Pathways

  • Contribute funds
  • Contribute to code
  • Contribute to documentation
  • Contribute to governance
  • Contribute to user research or user testing
  • Contribute to working groups or interest groups

Community Engagement Activities

  • Annual meetings
  • Blogs
  • Community calls
  • Conference participation
  • Interest, working, user, or advisory groups
  • Mailing lists and discussion forums (including Slack)
  • Social media
  • User research
  • Webinars and training

Engagement with Values Frameworks

  • Principles for Open Scholarly Infrastructure (POSI)

More About Community Engagement

User Contribution Pathways:

Data corrections through the affiliation editor, author-profile claiming and curation, the repository dashboard, and support tickets.

Community Engagement Activities:

Community engagement is core to how OpenAlex is run. Institutional supporters nominate and elect our Community Advisory Board and attend a quarterly members roundtable; notes from the CAB, town halls and members meetings are public (github.com/ourresearch/town-hall-notes). We run public consultations on data decisions (for example on retiring the OA colour taxonomy and on a novelty indicator, September 2026), quarterly town halls, regular webinars (recordings on YouTube), and our first in-person users meeting in Paris on 20-21 October 2026, hosted with CNRS and Sorbonne Université. Anyone can contribute: code and documentation on GitHub (all repositories public and MIT), data corrections through the affiliation editor, author-profile claiming and curation, and the repository dashboard, questions and discussion on the openalex-users mailing list, support tickets at openalex.org/support, and news on the blog, Bluesky, Mastodon, LinkedIn and X.

Policies & Governance

Governance Summary

OpenAlex is run by a US 501(c)(3) nonprofit (legal name Impactstory, Inc., doing business as OpenAlex; formerly known as OurResearch), incorporated in North Carolina in 2012. It is governed by a volunteer Board of Directors, which holds fiduciary and strategic responsibility. A Community Advisory Board of up to 11 people, nominated and elected by the institutional supporters that rely on OpenAlex, advises on strategy, budget, partnerships and organisational structure; its terms of reference are public and it meets at least twice a year. Articles of incorporation, bylaws, IRS determination letter, Form 990 tax filings, conflict-of-interest, anti-fraud and treasury policies are all published at openalex.org/about and openalex.org/terms. We are a signatory to the Principles of Open Scholarly Infrastructure and publish a self-assessment against them (most recently March 2026).

Policies

Bylaws

Implemented
Bylaws (Opens in new window)

Privacy Policy

Implemented
Privacy policy (Opens in new window)

Web Accessibility Statement

Implemented
Applies to Website
Accessibility statement (Opens in new window)

Governance Records

Implemented
CAB, town hall and members meeting notes (Opens in new window)

Governance Structure & Processes

Implemented
Governance and transparency (corporate documents, POSI) (Opens in new window) Community Advisory Board terms of reference (Opens in new window)

Transparent Pricing and Cost Expectations

Implemented
Pricing (Opens in new window)

Policy Statements

Access Conditions

  • Institutional membership available
  • Open without restrictions

Board Structure

  • Multi-board governance

Board Level

  • Provider

Community Governance

  • Formal

Additional Information

Organizational History

OpenAlex is built by a small nonprofit team that has been building open scholarly infrastructure since 2011, when the first lines of what became our code were written at an all-night hackathon. The organisation incorporated as Impactstory in North Carolina in 2012 and later operated as OurResearch; since 2026 it goes by OpenAlex. Along the way the team built Unpaywall (2017), an open index of open-access publications used by libraries and publishers worldwide, and Unsub (2020), a tool that helps libraries evaluate journal subscriptions; both now run on OpenAlex data. OpenAlex itself launched in beta on 3 January 2022 as an open successor to Microsoft Academic Graph, the web application for exploring the data followed in October 2023, and a complete rewrite of the codebase shipped in late 2025. Grants from Sloan, NSF, Arcadia, The Navigation Fund, Wellcome and Schmidt Sciences fund development projects; operations are funded by services and memberships.

Organizational Structure

Business or Ownership Model

Non-profit organization

Full-time Staff

1-5

Volunteers

11-20

Non-profit Status

501(c)3

Funding

Primary Funding Source

  • Program service revenue

Revenue Sources

  • Earned/commercial revenue
  • Grants (private)
  • Institutional memberships

Funding Needs

The core OpenAlex data is, and will stay, free and CC0. To keep the infrastructure healthy we charge for the services on top of the data, in line with POSI: API usage above a free daily budget, and annual Member, Member+ and Partner subscriptions for institutions, agencies and companies (from $5,000/year) that fund operations and give supporters a seat in governance. Grant funding is used for bounded development work, and every improvement it pays for becomes openly available to everyone. Ways to invest: subscribe as an institution or consortium (openalex.org/pricing), fund specific development such as new funder and award data, metadata-quality work or new entity types, and contribute code, documentation and data corrections.
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