25.01.2022
Massive open index of scholarly papers launches
OpenAlex catalogues hundreds of millions of scientific documents and charts connections between them.
« (…) 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 from 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.”
source > nature.com, Dalmeet Singh Chawla, 24 janvier 2022, doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-022-00138-y
