OpenAlex Works Search Scraper

OpenAlex Works Search Scraper is a BrowserAct Bot template for collecting structured public scholarly work records from OpenAlex. Configure a base URL, keyword, and result count, then run the Bot to return ranked research metadata for literature review, bibliometric analysis, citation tracking, catalog enrichment, or automation workflows.

What Does BrowserAct OpenAlex Works Search Scraper Do?

This template opens OpenAlex's public works search API, parses work records, and returns one structured record per scholarly work.

Key Features

• Extract public OpenAlex works search results without requiring a login.
• Capture work ID, DOI, title, publication date, type, citation count, open access status, source, URL, authors, topics, and keyword.
• Configure base URL, keyword, and count.
• Automatically page through results when the requested count exceeds one API page.
• Handle optional fields cleanly when OpenAlex does not provide them.

What Data Can I Extract from OpenAlex?

How to Use OpenAlex Works Search Scraper

1. Click Run task.
2. Enter the OpenAlex API base URL.
3. Enter a research topic, method, author area, or paper keyword.
4. Set how many work records to collect.
5. Run the Bot and review the structured scholarly results.
6. Reuse the Bot with another keyword or connect the output to your workflow.

Input Parameters

Example Output

{
  "works": [
    {
      "rank": 1,
      "work_id": "https://openalex.org/W2101234009",
      "doi": "https://doi.org/10.48550/arxiv.1201.0490",
      "title": "Scikit-learn: Machine Learning in Python",
      "publication_year": "2012",
      "publication_date": "2012-01-02",
      "work_type": "article",
      "cited_by_count": "63978",
      "open_access_status": "green",
      "source_name": "Open Repository and Bibliography (University of Liege)",
      "source_url": "https://orbi.uliege.be/handle/2268/225787",
      "authors": "Fabian Pedregosa; Gael Varoquaux; Alexandre Gramfort",
      "topics": "Computational Physics and Python Applications",
      "search_keyword": "machine learning"
    }
  ]
}

How Does it Work?

BrowserAct builds the public OpenAlex API URL in the format {base_url}/works?search={keyword}&per-page={count} for default-sized runs. OpenAlex returns JSON with work records and metadata.

For larger runs, BrowserAct uses OpenAlex pagination with per-page=200&page=N, appends records across pages, assigns cumulative ranks, and stops when the requested count is reached or OpenAlex has no more results.

How to Build a New Scraper Bot with Agent Built

Step 1: Describe the Data You Need

Open BrowserAct and start Agent Built from the Home prompt box or from Create -> Build with Agent. Paste a clear request that includes the website, the records to collect, the filters or search conditions, the fields to return, the result limit, and the inputs you want to reuse later.

Step 2: Let BrowserAct Build and Test the Bot

BrowserAct explores the live website, works out the navigation and extraction path, and validates the result. If BrowserAct asks for clarification, reply in the same build conversation with the missing URL, condition, field, example, or expected output.

Step 3: Run the Bot and Review the Result

When the build is complete, run the Bot with the default inputs first. Review the structured records, source URLs, missing fields, and row count before reusing the Bot with new inputs or connecting it to another workflow.

Why Scrape OpenAlex Work Results?

OpenAlex work data helps teams discover scholarly literature, compare citation signals, monitor research topics, enrich academic catalogs, build literature-review datasets, and route public research metadata into dashboards, alerts, or agent workflows.

Who Can Use This Template?

• Researchers collecting literature-review candidates.
• Data teams building academic metadata pipelines.
• Product teams tracking research activity in a topic.
• Libraries and knowledge teams enriching catalogs.
• Automation builders routing research metadata into spreadsheets, databases, alerts, or agents.

How Many Results Can You Scrape?

Use count to control the number of work records returned. OpenAlex serves up to 200 records per page, and the Bot pages through public results for larger requests up to the public paging limit verified during build.

Automation and Export

BrowserAct returns structured OpenAlex work records first. You can then use the output through API JSON responses, n8n workflows, Make scenarios, Zapier automations, MCP-based agent workflows configured from the Bot's Integrations tab, or manual CSV review.

Need Help?

Contact us at

Discord: Discord Community

E-mail: service@browseract.com