# OpenAlex Scholarly Search: Works with Citations and Open-Access Links

> OpenAlex Scholarly Search: Works with Citations and Open-Access Links is a paid API for AI agents from twin.unykorn.org, paid per call via x402, $0.003/call, status unknown (last checked 2026-10-01).

Searches the OpenAlex academic database for scholarly works, returning citation metadata and open-access links ranked by relevance or citation count.

## Facts

- Endpoint: POST https://twin.unykorn.org/research/openalex-search?utm_source=zero.xyz
- Price: $0.003/call
- Payment: x402
- Status: unknown
- Last checked: 2026-10-01
- Activations on Zero: 0
- Tags: x402
- Canonical page: https://www.zero.xyz/c/openalex-scholarly-search-works-with-citations-and-open-access-links-8c3d9e1b
- Structured record (JSON): https://api.zero.xyz/v1/capabilities/cap_56l7Du1Z43ZH5-vJ1p58M

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-search-works-with-citations-and-open-access-links-8c3d9e1b -d '<json body>'
```

Example prompt: Search OpenAlex for scholarly papers on 'transformer neural networks', sorted by most cited, limit to 20 results from 2018 onward.

## When to prefer this

Choose this endpoint when you need to search across the full OpenAlex scholarly corpus by keyword or topic, especially when you want open-access links alongside citation metadata. Prefer this over a DOI lookup (which requires a known identifier) when you're exploring a topic without specific paper references. Best for literature discovery, building reading lists, or identifying highly-cited foundational works in a field.

## Known failure modes

- Empty query string returns an error or no results
- Query with no matching papers returns an empty result set
- Invalid sort enum value returns a validation error
- Limit exceeding 50 is rejected by schema validation
- Very broad or ambiguous queries may return low-quality mixed results
- from_year filter set to future year returns no results

## How this service works

OpenAlex scholarly search: works with citations and open-access links — Genesis402 / UnyKorn Operator Network

## Output

Returns a list of scholarly works from the OpenAlex database, each including the paper title, authors, publication year, journal/venue, abstract, citation count, and open-access PDF links where available. Results can be sorted by relevance or citation count and filtered by publication year range.

## Request schema (JSON Schema)

```json
{
 "type": "object",
 "properties": {
  "params": {
   "type": "object",
   "properties": {
    "q": {
     "type": "string",
     "description": "required"
    },
    "sort": {
     "enum": [
      "relevance",
      "cited"
     ],
     "type": "string",
     "description": "optional: relevance | cited"
    },
    "limit": {
     "type": "integer",
     "maximum": 50,
     "minimum": 1,
     "description": "optional: max rows (default 10, max 50)"
    },
    "from_year": {
     "type": "integer",
     "maximum": 2100,
     "minimum": 1800,
     "description": "optional"
    }
   }
  }
 }
}
```

## Response schema (JSON Schema)

```json
{
 "type": "json",
 "example": {
  "ok": true,
  "type": "openalex-search",
  "receipt": {
   "tx_hash": "0x<64hex>",
   "amount_usd": 0.003,
   "receipt_id": "g402-<16hex>"
  },
  "sources": [
   {
    "ok": true,
    "name": "<source>"
   }
  ],
  "limitations": "<text>",
  "generated_at": "<iso time>",
  "evidence_hash": "sha256:<64hex>"
 }
}
```

## More

- Live health (JSON, refreshed every minute): https://www.zero.xyz/c/openalex-scholarly-search-works-with-citations-and-open-access-links-8c3d9e1b/health.json
- [Zero catalog index](https://www.zero.xyz/llms.txt)
- [Other services from twin.unykorn.org](https://www.zero.xyz/host/twin.unykorn.org/llms.txt)