NEWS
Massive open index of scholarly papers launches
OpenAlex catalogues hundreds of millions of scientific documents and charts connections between them .
Dalmeet Singh Chawla
Current Address : Nature Reprinted from : https :// go . nature . com / 37lcbUp
An ambitious free index of more than 200 million scientific documents that catalogues publication sources , author information and research topics , has been launched .
The index , called
OpenAlex after the ancient Library of Alexandria in Egypt , also aims to chart connections between these data points to create a comprehensive , interlinked database of the global research system , say its founders . The database , which launched on 3 January , is a replacement for Microsoft Academic Graph ( MAG ), a free alternative to subscription-based platforms such as Scopus , Dimensions and Web of Science that was discontinued at the end of 2021 .
“ It ’ s just pulling lots of databases together in a clever way ,” says Euan Adie , founder of Overton , a London-based firm that tracks the research cited in policy documents . Overton had been getting its data from various sources , including MAG , ORCID , Crossref and directly from publishers , but has now switched to using only OpenAlex , in the hope of making the process easier .
Improved coverage
Microsoft ’ s move to close MAG ,
announced last May , worried some academics and others who used its data to conduct studies and build research tools .
In response to MAG ’ s closure , non-profit scholarly services firm OurResearch in Vancouver , Canada , created OpenAlex , using part of a US $ 4.5-million grant from London-based charity Arcadia Fund . The index is currently accessible through an application programming interface , or API , that can perform complex searches . A simpler
search-engine interface is scheduled to launch in February .
OpenAlex draws its data from MAG ’ s existing records and other sources including Wikidata identifiers , ORCID , Crossref and ROR , says Jason Priem , co-founder of OurResearch .
The tool is also integrated with the
Unpaywall database , which contains more than 30 million open-access articles that Priem and OurResearch co-founder Heather Piwowar
launched in 2017 . “ We now have much better coverage of open access than MAG ever did ,” Priem says . “ Not only can we tell you where the free-to-read copies of any particular article live , but we can also tell you the licence and the version of that article .”
Priem says that OpenAlex updates every fortnight by bringing in more data from its sources . The tool goes a step further towards openness than MAG did because OpenAlex ’ s data is freely available under a CC0 copyright licence for anyone to build on , says Priem . That means that if OpenAlex were to be discontinued , any researcher can pick up where OurResearch left off instead of having to rebuild the whole database from scratch .
Easy set-up
OpenAlex is also free to use , thanks to sponsorship from Amazon Web Services , and requires no registration or log-in information , making the process more user-friendly , says Priem . This differs from MAG , for which users had to log into Azure , Microsoft ’ s cloud-hosting system , and pay a small fee to download their data set . Priem says that his firm might consider rolling out a premium , pay-to-use tier of OpenAlex for users who want super-fast access , but a free up-to-date version will always be available .
It ’ s “ written in such a way that ’ s very easy for somebody to pick up and use ”, says Adie . He adds that it took him only about 20 minutes to get started on OpenAlex , compared with three to four days with MAG . “ The downside is that Microsoft had a lot of technical capability that they could apply to Microsoft Academic . So we ’ ll have to see how OurResearch does without that ,” Adie says .
Roar Bakken Stovner , who studies researchers ’ citations patterns at Oslo Metropolitan University , says that it took him around two hours to start working with OpenAlex , compared with around a week with MAG . “ For somebody who is more computer savvy , MAG might be easier ,” he says . “ For researchers who want to try small projects on their own , OpenAlex will be way easier to start with .”
Frode Opdahl , chief executive of Keenious , a start-up firm based in Tromsø , Norway , which scans millions of papers to suggest relevant references , says he ’ s pleased with the documentation published about OpenAlex . “ It makes it a lot easier to work with and implement into our product ,” he says .
Credit : Getty
49 Grassroots Vol 22 No 1 March 2022