Reporting by XinZhiyuan
Edited by David Time
In order to replace the "Microsoft Academic Search" that has been offline, the large free academic index OpenAlex has been officially launched at the beginning of this year, it covers 200 million scientific literature, easy to learn and use, completely free, the website will be launched in February.
Recently, OpenAlex, a large free academic resource index, was announced to go live, which contains more than 200 million scientific literature.
This resource indexing service is called OpenAlex, which is derived from the name of the ancient Egyptian Library of Alexandria.
The founders said the index catalogs publication sources, author information, and research topics to map the connections between these data points to create a comprehensive, interrelated database of global research systems.
Last May, Microsoft announced that it would shut down the Scholar Search Knowledge Graph (MAG) at the end of that year, raising concerns among some academics and others who are using its data for research and development.
In response to MAG's downline, OurResearch, a nonprofit academic services firm based in Vancouver, Canada, created this "great project" using a portion of the $4.5 million provided by the Arcadia Fund, a London-based charity.
Launched on January 3 this year, the free academic index database is functionally similar to Microsoft's Academic Graph (MAG), a free alternative to academic subscription platforms such as Scopus, Dimensions and the Web of Science, which was discontinued at the end of 2021.
It is reported that the index is currently accessed through an application programming interface or API that can perform complex searches.
Successor to Microsoft Academic Atlas
Both researchers and developers need to consult a lot of academic achievements such as papers and monographs. In recent years, more and more people have begun to bypass the "paywall" of academic publishers and obtain academic resources for free through a variety of means.
As a replacement for Microsoft MAG, OpenAlex has been getting papers, authors and other data entities from MAG. After MAG officially ceased operations, OpenAlex began collecting more new content from the Internet on its own.
OpenAlex has released a new REST API. Access to the OpenAlex database is faster and simpler than previous downloads and installations, require no account and tokens, and are completely free.
Currently, single entities, entity lists, and entity groups are available through the API.
The OpenAlex dataset describes the 5 types of academic entities and the connections between these realities. Each type of entity corresponds to its target separately:
Results: Including papers, books, datasets, etc., other results will be cited
Author: The person who made the results
Source: The journal or repository in which the results are published
Institution: (by author) University or other organization related to the outcome
Concept: Label results in a topical manner
OpenAlex says the easiest way to explore OpenAlex datasets is through a web interface that doesn't require you to write code. However, the current website development has not yet been completed, and it is expected to be launched in February this year.
Although MAG has been deactivated, as its successor and replacement, OpenAlex will continue to maintain the MAG format until July 2 this year, and from July 2022, OpenAlex will no longer support the MAG format.
As it is still in the early stages of development and the features need to be further refined, OpenAlex limits the number of individual user calls per day to less than 100,000.
Three advantages of OpenAlex
After comprehensively comparing various databases, Xiaobian found that OpenAlex has three obvious advantages, which will bring users a good experience.
Massive data, coverage beyond MAG
Jason Priem, co-founder of OurResearch, said, "OpenAlex was created to interconnect with several other databases and make it more extensive and comprehensive."
Compared to a single database, OpenAlex has a more open access coverage, with data resources from Wikidata identifiers, MAG, ORCID, Crossref, ROR, Unpaywall, and more.
Prim said, "We can not only provide users with a free version of the article, but also tell you the authorization and different versions of the article."
Simple and easy to use, 20 minutes will be
"OpenAlex is a clever way to put a lot of databases together." Euan Adie, founder of Overton, said.
Overton is a London-based company that primarily tracks references to policy documents. In the past, Overton obtained data from different sources, including MAG, ORCID, Crossref, and also directly from individuals.
Now, Overton only uses OpenAlex, hoping that the search process will be more convenient and easy to learn with simple setup.
"I only need 20 minutes to use OpenAlex, compared to 3-4 days compared to MAG." Adi said.
"It took me about 2 hours to learn OpenAlex, but it took a week to start using MAG." Another user, Roar Bakken Stovner, said.
Stovner believes that MAG may not be difficult for those who are more computer-savvy, while OpenAlex will be easier to get started for those who want to try to develop small projects on their own.
No login required, completely free
The underlying code of OpenAlex is freely available under the CC0 copyright license and can be developed on it by anyone.
As a result, Jason Priem said, OpenAlex is updated every two weeks, a step further than MAG.
If, one day, OpenAlex stops working, anyone can continue to develop from the progress that Prime stopped, rather than having to build the database from scratch.
Previously, users of MAG had to log in to the system and pay a small fee to download it. And OpenAlex is free to use.
Prim said this is thanks to Amazon Web Services' sponsorship, which doesn't require registration or login, which makes the process much friendlier.
However, OpenAlex may consider launching a paid premium version for those who want ultra-fast access.
However, the free version is always available.
Resources:
https://docs.openalex.org/