OpenAlex: The open catalog to the global research system

"OpenAlex is a free and open catalog of the world's scholarly papers, researchers, journals, and institutions — along with all the ways they're connected to one another. Using OpenAlex, you can build your own scholarly search engine, recommender service, or knowledge graph. You can help manage research by tracking citation impact, spotting promising new research areas, and identifying and promoting work from underrepresented groups. And you can do research on research itself, in areas like bibliometrics,science and technology studies, and Science of science policy Because we think all research should be free and open, OpenAlex is free and open itself, and we're built on a fully Open Source codebase. 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.... Let's start way back at the beginning, with the ancient Library of Alexandria. Working 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, $4.5M grant from Arcadia, a charitable fund of Lisbet Rausing and Peter Baldwin. 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! Our first beta data dump release was in in mid-November, 2021. OpenAlex will remain in beta until our official launch on January 3, 2022 — just in time to take up the mantle from MAG, which closes up shop December 31st...."