Linking OpenAlex as a source
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Skip the manual setup — run this in your project and the wizard auto-detects your databases and APIs and connects them to PostHog.
This source is currently in alpha. The interface and available tables may change.
The OpenAlex connector syncs works, authors, awards, and more into the PostHog data warehouse, so you can analyze them alongside your product data.
Prerequisites
Credentials that can read the data you want to sync. PostHog only reads data, so read access is enough.
Adding a data source
- In PostHog, go to the Sources tab of the data pipeline section.
- Click + New source and click Link next to this source.
- Enter your credentials (see Configuration below) and click Next.
- Select the tables you want to sync, choose a sync method and frequency, then click Import.
Once the syncs are complete, you can start querying this data in PostHog.
Enter your OpenAlex API key to pull scholarly metadata.
Keys are free and take about a minute to create at openalex.org/settings/api.
OpenAlex indexes over 300 million works and 120 million authors, which is more than a free key's daily allowance covers. Use the filter fields to narrow the works, authors and awards tables to the records you care about, for example authorships.institutions.lineage:i27837315 for one institution's papers. The filtering guide lists the available filter fields. Leave a filter blank to sync the whole entity.
You'll be asked for:
- API key
Sync modes
Each table can be synced in one of several modes, depending on what the source supports:
- Webhook (when available) – the source pushes changes to PostHog in real time. Fastest freshness, lowest ongoing cost, and the only mode that reliably captures updates and deletes.
- Incremental – only new or updated rows are synced on each run, using a cursor field (such as an
updated_attimestamp). Cheaper than a full refresh, but deletes aren't captured. - Append only – new rows are appended using a cursor field; existing rows are never updated. Ideal for immutable, append-only tables like event logs.
- Full refresh – the whole table is reloaded on every sync. Use it when a table has no reliable cursor or when you need deletions reflected.
See sync methods for a full explanation of how each mode works and how to choose between them.
All OpenAlex tables are full refresh. Each sync replaces the contents of the table.
Configuration
| Option | Type | Required |
|---|---|---|
API key | password | Yes |
Works filter (optional) | text | No |
Authors filter (optional) | text | No |
Awards filter (optional) | text | No |
Supported tables
| Table | Description | Sync method | Incremental field | Primary key |
|---|---|---|---|---|
works | Scholarly documents indexed by OpenAlex: journal articles, books, datasets, preprints and theses. | Incremental, Full refresh | publication_date | — |
authors | People who create scholarly works, disambiguated by OpenAlex into one record per person. | Full refresh | — | — |
awards | Grants and other research awards, linked to their funder and to the works they produced. | Full refresh | — | — |
sources | Journals, conferences, book series and repositories that host works. | Full refresh | — | — |
institutions | Universities and other organizations that authors are affiliated with. | Full refresh | — | — |
publishers | Companies and organizations that publish journals, books and other sources. | Full refresh | — | — |
funders | Organizations that fund research, linked to the works and awards they support. | Full refresh | — | — |
topics | Roughly 4,500 research topics that works, authors and sources are classified into. | Full refresh | — | — |
keywords | Free-text keywords assigned to works, with usage and citation counts. | Full refresh | — | — |
domains | Top level of the topic hierarchy: four broad areas of research. | Full refresh | — | — |
fields | Second level of the topic hierarchy: 26 fields, each belonging to a domain. | Full refresh | — | — |
subfields | Third level of the topic hierarchy: 252 subfields, each belonging to a field. | Full refresh | — | — |
sdgs | The 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals that works are tagged against. | Full refresh | — | — |
countries | Countries used in institution and authorship records, with their research output counts. | Full refresh | — | — |
continents | The seven continents countries are grouped into. | Full refresh | — | — |
languages | Languages works are written in, with their work and citation counts. | Full refresh | — | — |
work_types | Types a work can be classified as, such as article, book-chapter or dataset. | Full refresh | — | — |
source_types | Types a source can be classified as, such as journal, repository or conference. | Full refresh | — | — |
institution_types | Types an institution can be classified as, such as education, company or government. | Full refresh | — | — |
licenses | Licenses that open access copies of works are published under. | Full refresh | — | — |
Troubleshooting
- If the connection fails with an authorization error, the API key is wrong, expired, or has been revoked. Create a new one, then reconnect the source.
- If a table syncs no rows, the credential may not have access to that data. Check its permissions, then reconnect the source.
If your sync is failing or data looks wrong, see the Data warehouse troubleshooting guide. If that doesn't help, contact support – we're happy to help.