# OpenAlex Scholarly Literature Search

> OpenAlex Scholarly Literature Search is a paid API for AI agents from api.vextorium.com, paid per call via x402, $0.003/call, status unknown (last checked 2026-10-29).

Searches 250M+ academic works in OpenAlex by keyword, returning titles, authors, institutions, year, journal, citation count, DOI, and open-access links, sortable by relevance, citations, or recency.

## Facts

- Endpoint: POST https://api.vextorium.com/investigacion-buscar-pago?utm_source=zero.xyz
- Price: $0.003/call
- Payment: x402
- Status: unknown
- Last checked: 2026-10-29
- Activations on Zero: 0
- Tags: x402
- Canonical page: https://www.zero.xyz/c/openalex-scholarly-literature-search-97e63af7
- Structured record (JSON): https://api.zero.xyz/v1/capabilities/cap_2hR3RqKMV46eGCcm0tdoQ

Status and success rate cover calls made through Zero and Zero's own probes. Third-party monitors may report differently.

## How to call it through Zero

Zero handles the 402 payment challenge and records the run. With the Zero CLI installed (`npm i -g @zeroxyz/cli`):

```sh
zero fetch --capability openalex-scholarly-literature-search-97e63af7 -d '<json body>'
```

Example prompt: Search OpenAlex for the 10 most-cited papers on CRISPR gene editing published since 2018, sorted by citations, and only show me open-access ones.

## When to prefer this

Choose this endpoint when you need structured, metadata-rich academic search results from a comprehensive multidisciplinary corpus (250M+ works). It's ideal when you need citation counts, open-access links, institutional affiliations, or DOI data alongside search results. Prefer it over general web search when the user explicitly wants peer-reviewed or scholarly sources, or when building literature review pipelines.

## Known failure modes

- Empty query string returns validation error
- No results found for highly niche or misspelled queries
- Rate limiting or payment failure returns HTTP 402 or 429
- Invalid enum value for 'orden' field causes schema validation error
- Very broad queries may return truncated or low-relevance results

## How this service works

Search scholarly literature across all fields in OpenAlex (250M+ works): title, authors, institutions, year, journal, citation count, DOI and open-access link; by relevance, citations or date.

## Output

Returns a list of academic works matching the query, each including title, authors array, affiliated institutions, publication year, journal/venue name, citation count, work type, DOI, and an open-access URL if available. Also includes the total number of matching results and the source (OpenAlex).

## Request schema (JSON Schema)

```json
{
 "type": "object",
 "properties": {
  "orden": {
   "enum": [
    "relevancia",
    "citas",
    "recientes"
   ],
   "type": "string"
  },
  "buscar": {
   "type": "string"
  },
  "limite": {
   "type": "integer"
  },
  "desde_año": {
   "type": "integer"
  },
  "solo_abiertos": {
   "type": "boolean"
  }
 }
}
```

## More

- Live health (JSON, refreshed every minute): https://www.zero.xyz/c/openalex-scholarly-literature-search-97e63af7/health.json
- [Zero catalog index](https://www.zero.xyz/llms.txt)
- [Other services from api.vextorium.com](https://www.zero.xyz/host/api.vextorium.com/llms.txt)