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OpenAlex Academic Search

Search OpenAlex for academic papers with citation, affiliation, funding and open-access metadata.

Source Download skill
Repository
wanshuiyin/Auto-claude-code-research-in-sleep
Stars
18,482
Licence
MIT
Files
1 file

What it does

Once installed, the agent can search the OpenAlex open academic database for papers matching a topic and filter them by year, work type, open-access status, citation count, and sort order. It can also look up a specific paper by its DOI or OpenAlex ID and return structured details such as authors, venue, citation counts, open-access links, abstracts, topics, and keywords. The skill positions OpenAlex as a complement to other paper sources like arXiv and Semantic Scholar, focused on open citation data and institutional and funding information.

Great for

  • Researchers doing literature reviews who want citation counts and open-access links in one place
  • Students compiling reference lists with DOIs and author affiliations
  • Anyone building a dataset of papers filtered by year, type, or citation threshold

Skip it if

  • Finding very recent preprints only, since arXiv or a general web search is more direct for that (the skill itself recommends those for cutting-edge work)
  • Users who expect the skill to work out of the box without installing Python, the requests library, and the helper script the skill relies on

Try asking

  • “search openalex for transformer efficiency papers from 2022 onward with open access, sorted by citations”
  • “Find the OpenAlex record for DOI 10.1109/TWC.2024.1234567 and summarize it”
  • “Search openalex for federated learning surveys, max 20 results, type article”
  • “Show me the top-cited papers on graph neural networks from 2020-2023 with their funding information”
Step-by-step guide: how to use OpenAlex Academic SearchInstall, first run, examples, tips and FAQs

Install in 3 steps

  1. 1

    Download the skill

    The ZIP contains the 1 original files, the MIT licence and an attribution note.

    openalex.zip
  2. 2

    Add it to your agent

    Claude Code (all projects)

    mkdir -p ~/.claude/skills && unzip openalex.zip -d ~/.claude/skills/

    Claude Code / Agent SDK (this project only)

    mkdir -p .claude/skills && unzip openalex.zip -d .claude/skills/

    Claude apps (web/desktop): Settings → Capabilities → Skills → Upload skill, and choose the ZIP.

  3. 3

    Ask for the task

    No special command needed — the agent reads the skill's description and loads it when your request matches. Try one of the prompts above.

Get better results

  • Set OPENALEX_API_KEY and OPENALEX_EMAIL in your shell before launching Claude Code, since the helper reads them from its process environment and a later export will not take effect.
  • Use the filter flags such as --year, --type, --open-access, and --min-citations to narrow large result sets early.
  • Run the verify command with --max 3 first to confirm the helper and requests library are working before a full search.

What's inside

  • SKILL.md

Redistributed unmodified from wanshuiyin/Auto-claude-code-research-in-sleep under the MIT licence. The assessment was drafted with AI from the skill's files on 2026-10-29. Skills can instruct your agent to run code — read SKILL.md and any scripts before installing.