When you use the API to get a single author or lists of authors, this is what's returned.
List: List of objects, representing the affiliations this author has claimed in their publications. Each object in the list has two properties:
institution
: a dehydratedInstitution
objectyears
: a list of the years in which this author claimed an affiliation with this institution
affiliations: [
{
institution: {
id: "https://openalex.org/I201448701",
ror: "https://ror.org/00cvxb145",
...
},
years: [2018, 2019, 2020]
},
{
institution: {
id: "https://openalex.org/I74973139",
ror: "https://ror.org/05x2bcf33",
...
},
years: [2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019]
}
]
Integer: The total number 📄 Works that cite a work this author has created.
cited_by_count: 38
List: Author.works_count
and Author.cited_by_count
for each of the last ten years, binned by year. To put it another way: each year, you can see how many works this author published, and how many times they got cited.
Any works or citations older than ten years old aren't included. Years with zero works and zero citations have been removed so you will need to add those in if you need them.
counts_by_year: [
{
year: 2022,
works_count: 0,
cited_by_count: 8
},
{
year: 2021,
works_count: 1,
cited_by_count: 252
},
...
{
year: 2012,
works_count: 7,
cited_by_count: 79
}
]
String: The date this Author
object was created in the OpenAlex dataset, expressed as an ISO 8601 date string.
created_date: "2017-08-08"
String: The name of the author as a single string.
display_name: "Jason Priem"
List: Other ways that we've found this author's name displayed.
display_name_alternatives: [
"Jason R Priem"
]
String: The OpenAlex ID for this author.
id: "https://openalex.org/A5023888391"
Object: All the external identifiers that we know about for this author. IDs are expressed as URIs whenever possible. Possible ID types:
openalex
(String: this author's OpenAlex ID. Same asAuthor.id
)orcid
(String: this author's ORCID ID. Same asAuthor.orcid
)scopus
(String: this author's Scopus author ID)twitter
(String: this author's Twitter handle)wikipedia
(String: this author's Wikipedia page)
{% hint style="info" %} Most authors are missing one or more ID types (either because we don't know the ID, or because it was never assigned). Keys for null IDs are not displayed. {% endhint %}
ids: {
openalex: "https://openalex.org/A5023888391",
orcid: "https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6187-6610",
scopus: "http://www.scopus.com/inward/authorDetails.url?authorID=36455008000&partnerID=MN8TOARS",
},
{% hint style="danger" %}
This field has been deprecated. Its replacement is last_known_institutions
.
{% endhint %}
List: List of Institution objects. This author's last known institutional affiliations. In this context "last known" means that we took all the author's Works, sorted them by publication date, and selected the most recent one. If there is only one affiliated institution for this author for the work, this will be a list of length 1; if there are multiple affiliations, they will all be included in the list.
Each item in the list is a dehydrated Institution
object, and you can find more documentation on the Institution page.
last_known_institutions: [{
id: "https://openalex.org/I4200000001",
ror: "https://ror.org/02nr0ka47",
display_name: "OurResearch",
country_code: "CA",
type: "nonprofit",
lineage: ["https://openalex.org/I4200000001"]
}],
String: The ORCID ID for this author. ORCID is a global and unique ID for authors. This is the Canonical external ID for authors.
{% hint style="warning" %} Compared to other Canonical IDs, ORCID coverage is relatively low in OpenAlex, because ORCID adoption in the wild has been slow compared with DOI, for example. This is particularly an issue when dealing with older works and authors. {% endhint %}
orcid: "https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6187-6610"
Object: Citation metrics for this author
2yr_mean_citedness
Float: The 2-year mean citedness for this source. Also known as impact factor. We use the year prior to the current year for the citations (the numerator) and the two years prior to that for the citation-receiving publications (the denominator).h_index
Integer: The h-index for this author.i10_index
Integer: The i-10 index for this author.
While the 2-year mean citedness is normally a journal-level metric, it can be calculated for any set of papers, so we include it for authors.
summary_stats: {
2yr_mean_citedness: 1.5295340589458237,
h_index: 45,
i10_index: 205
}
String: The last time anything in this author object changed, expressed as an ISO 8601 date string. This date is updated for any change at all, including increases in various counts.
updated_date: "2022-01-02T00:00:00"
String: A URL that will get you a list of all this author's works.
We express this as an API URL (instead of just listing the works themselves) because sometimes an author's publication list is too long to reasonably fit into a single author object.
works_api_url: "https://api.openalex.org/works?filter=author.id:A5023888391",
Integer: The number of 📄 Works this this author has created.
works_count: 38
{% hint style="info" %} This is updated a couple times per day. So the count may be slightly different than what's in works when viewed like this. {% endhint %}
{% hint style="danger" %}
x_concepts
will be deprecated and removed soon. We will be replacing this functionality with Topics
instead.
{% endhint %}
List: The concepts most frequently applied to works created by this author. Each is represented as a dehydrated Concept
object, with one additional attribute:
score
(Float): The strength of association between this author and the listed concept, from 0-100.
x_concepts: [
{
id: "https://openalex.org/C41008148",
wikidata: null,
display_name: "Computer science",
level: 0,
score: 97.4
},
{
id: "https://openalex.org/C17744445",
wikidata: null,
display_name: "Political science",
level: 0,
score: 78.9
}
]
The DehydratedAuthor
is stripped-down Author
object, with most of its properties removed to save weight. Its only remaining properties are: