John Barrios · Yale School of Management Claude Code for Accounting Research

Openalex Api

Research Tools
Access and analyze OpenAlex scholarly metadata through the REST API, including works, authors, institutions, sources, concepts, topics, funders, and publishers. Use when asked to retrieve publication or citation metadata, run OpenAlex searches with filters, map author-institution relationships, or build reproducible bibliometric datasets from OpenAlex.

Download openalex-api.zip

Barrios Skills — John Barrios’s curated workflow for economists and accountants. Prioritize reproducible empirical work, clear identification language, and journal-ready output.

OpenAlex API

Overview

Use this skill to turn research questions into reliable OpenAlex API queries and structured outputs. Prefer scripts/query_openalex.py for repeatable retrieval, pagination, and filter-safe URL construction.

Workflow

  1. Define the target entity: works, authors, institutions, sources, concepts, topics, funders, or publishers.
  2. Define retrieval scope: exact ID lookup, search, or filtered dataset pull.
  3. Build query parameters with scripts/query_openalex.py instead of handcrafting URLs.
  4. Retrieve data to JSON/JSONL and keep the raw export before downstream cleaning.
  5. Validate key fields (IDs, dates, citation counts, authorships) before analysis.

Query Rules

  • Use repeated --filter flags for AND logic.
  • Use OpenAlex pipe syntax (for example value1|value2) inside one filter for OR logic.
  • Use --select to reduce payload size for large pulls.
  • Use --cursor '*' for deep paging beyond basic page limits.
  • Include --mailto you@domain.edu for polite-pool style identification.
  • Use OPENALEX_API_KEY or --api-key when available for higher-rate access.

Common Commands

# Fetch one work by OpenAlex ID
python3 scripts/query_openalex.py works --entity-id W2741809807 --select "id,display_name,publication_year,cited_by_count"

# Search works and save first 200 records
python3 scripts/query_openalex.py works \
  --search "political polarization" \
  --filter "from_publication_date:2020-01-01" \
  --sort "cited_by_count:desc" \
  --per-page 100 \
  --pages 2 \
  --output polarization_works.json

# Cursor-paginate author records to JSONL
python3 scripts/query_openalex.py authors \
  --filter "last_known_institutions.country_code:US" \
  --cursor "*" \
  --max-results 500 \
  --format jsonl \
  --output us_authors.jsonl

Output Guidance

  • Prefer JSON for full response bundles and JSONL for row-wise pipelines.
  • Keep original IDs (id, ids.openalex, DOI fields) unchanged in exports.
  • When reporting findings, cite exact query parameters used to ensure reproducibility.

Resources

  • Use scripts/query_openalex.py for all API calls.
  • Use references/openalex-query-patterns.md for entity routing, filter templates, and reusable query patterns.