The best way to search for sources is to use the search query parameter, which searches across display_name, alternate_titles, and abbreviated_title. Example:
- Search for the abbreviated version of the Journal of the American Chemical Society "
jacs":
https://api.openalex.org/sources?search=jacs
{% hint style="info" %} You can read more about search here. It will show you how relevance score is calculated, how words are stemmed to improve search results, and how to do complex boolean searches. {% endhint %}
You can also use search as a filter, allowing you to fine-tune the fields you're searching over. To do this, you append .search to the end of the property you are filtering for:
- Get sources with "nature" in the title:
https://api.openalex.org/sources?filter=display_name.search:nature
The following fields can be searched as a filter within sources:
| Search filter | Field that is searched |
|---|---|
display_name.search |
display_name |
You can also use the filter default.search, which works the same as using the search parameter.
You can autocomplete sources to create a very fast type-ahead style search function:
- Autocomplete sources with "neuro" in the display_name:
https://api.openalex.org/autocomplete/sources?q=neuro
This returns a list of sources with the publisher set as the hint:
{
"results": [
{
"id": "https://openalex.org/S5555990",
"display_name": "The Journal of Neuroscience",
"hint": "Society for Neuroscience",
"cited_by_count": 4274712,
"works_count": 40376,
"entity_type": "source",
"external_id": "0270-6474"
},
// more results
]
}
{% hint style="info" %} Read more in the autocomplete page in the API guide. {% endhint %}