AI Agent Hub
Back to skills
OpenAlex Academic Search icon

OpenAlex Academic Search

Knowledge Management Updated 2026.08.30

Paste the following prompt into your AI chat to install this skill:

Please install @user_caed61ea/slug1234567 by following https://skillhub.cn/install/skillhub.md.

About this skill

Problem

Literature reviews often fail at turning repeated search hits into a clean, reviewable set. This skill queries OpenAlex for 250M+ academic works without an API key, which is useful for paper discovery, author tracking, DOI lookup, and citation-chain inspection.

How It Works

It separates common search actions into composable commands: topic search, author search, DOI lookup, retrieval of papers citing a work, and deep read for abstracts and full text when available. Output includes title, year, authors, abstract, citation count, DOI, open-access URL, and source journal, with JSON output for scripting.
The built-in literature review workflow runs a multi-step process: search across query variations, deduplicate and rank by relevance plus citations, identify thematic clusters, and generate a Markdown synthesis. Options include --papers N for target count, --years 2020-2025 for publication range, and --json for structured output.

Boundaries

OpenAlex sorts by relevance by default; use --sort citations when citation count matters. Abstracts, open-access URLs, and full text depend on source availability, and PDF retrieval requires an external tool. It is suitable for discovery and organization, not a replacement for formal citation management, rights checks, or academic verification.

Use Cases

  • Before drafting a research proposal, run multi-query paper searches, deduplicate and rank results, then generate Markdown notes.
  • After finding a core DOI, retrieve papers citing it to trace the research lineage.
  • Triage candidate papers by reading abstracts and available full text to decide which deserve deeper analysis.
  • Convert search output to JSON and filter programmatically by citations, year, and open-access links.

Best For

  • Graduate students writing literature reviews who need to turn multi-query search results into reviewable notes.
  • University faculty doing research surveys who need to filter candidate papers by topic, year, and citations.
  • Algorithm engineers tracking technical directions who need DOI-based citation chains and open-access copies.
  • Data analysts scripting academic workflows who need JSON search output for filtering and downstream processing.