# OpenAlex

> Scholarly works, People for Worldwide. Access: Public API. Terms checked November 2, 2026.

- Slug: openalex
- Page: https://api.lineage.rexstjohn.com/sources/openalex
- JSON: https://api.lineage.rexstjohn.com/v1/sources/openalex
- Records: Scholarly works, People
- Places: Worldwide
- Years: Not stated by the source
- Access method: api
- Key required: no
- Rate limit: Without a key: 10 requests a second, and one free daily budget of 10 US cents shared by every client on the caller's IP address (a search costs a tenth of a cent, a filtered list a hundredth of a cent, a single record nothing). The mailto parameter no longer raises the limit. A free key raises the budget to one US dollar a day.
- Status: live
- Review: verified, checked by hand on 2026-11-02
- Homepage: https://openalex.org/
- API docs: https://help.openalex.org/api/authentication/
- Terms: https://help.openalex.org/access/example-costs/

## Notes

Academic works, authors and their affiliations (theses, papers, institutions by year). Lineage calls it without a key: one author search (10 credits of OpenAlex's own budget) and one filtered works list (1 credit) per node, each sent with the Lineage User-Agent and the contact address from LINEAGE_CONTACT_EMAIL when set. Responses are cached 6 hours per instance. On a server whose shared keyless budget is spent, OpenAlex answers 429 and the node is listed in skipped[]; Lineage never asks for or creates a key. OpenAlex data is CC0. Citations point at the work's openalex.org page, which OpenAlex serves to scripts.

## Evidence

- https://help.openalex.org/how-to-use-the-api/rate-limits-and-authentication
- https://help.openalex.org/api/authentication.md
- https://help.openalex.org/access/example-costs.md
- https://help.openalex.org/llms.txt
- https://api.openalex.org/robots.txt

## Status

Live at the last check, 2026-11-03 04:33 UTC. HTTP 200 in 217 ms. One check a day.

This file describes a catalog entry only.