> Markdown rendering of https://www.thesisai.io/es/blog/openalex-integration/. The index of every agent-readable page on this site is at https://www.thesisai.io/llms.txt. [ Back to the archive ](https://www.thesisai.io/es/blog/) Compartir [ Try ThesisAI ](https://www.thesisai.io/es/chat/) AI Tools November 14, 2026 7 min read # OpenAlex in ThesisAI: Write From 190 Million Open Access Papers ThesisAI can now build your source base from OpenAlex, the open catalogue of the world's research. Describe your topic, pick your fields and years, and it finds, downloads and reads the open access papers your document will cite. J Jonas Berger _· M. Sc._ Copiar enlace Print What's inside On this page Progress 0% Until now there were two ways to give ThesisAI its sources: upload your own PDFs, import them from Zotero or Mendeley, or let it search Semantic Scholar for you. OpenAlex is now a third search source, sitting next to Semantic Scholar in the paper source picker. This post covers what OpenAlex is, what happens when you choose it, how it differs from Semantic Scholar and from uploading, and how to get the best set of papers out of it. ## What OpenAlex Is OpenAlex is a free, open index of scholarly works, authors, institutions and venues, run by the non-profit OurResearch. It was built as an open successor to Microsoft Academic Graph and is released under a CC0 licence, which is why so many university libraries, bibliometric studies and research tools now rely on it. For a thesis writer, three properties matter: * **Breadth.** Over 190 million papers, including strong coverage of the social sciences, humanities and journals published outside the English-speaking world. * **Open access data.** OpenAlex records where a free, legal copy of each work lives, so a tool can go straight to the full text instead of stopping at the abstract. * **A clean topic taxonomy.** Every work is classified into domains, fields and subfields, which makes filtering by discipline precise. ## What Happens When You Choose OpenAlex 1. **You describe your document.** The same prompt you would write for any ThesisAI document: topic, research question, type and length. 2. **You narrow the search.** Tick the fields of study that apply and, optionally, set a publication year range. The field picker is the same one Semantic Scholar uses, mapped onto the OpenAlex taxonomy behind the scenes. 3. **ThesisAI writes the searches.** Your topic becomes six English search queries from different angles: the two core terms, a focused query, an alternative angle, the broader context, and a methodological query. 4. **It keeps only what it can read.** Results are limited to open access journal articles, reviews and preprints that have a downloadable PDF. Papers without an accessible full text are dropped rather than cited from an abstract. 5. **It downloads and indexes the papers.** Typically 50 to 200 papers end up in your source library, where you can see them before the writing starts. 6. **The document is written from them.** Every citation is grounded in a passage from a paper in that library, exactly as with uploaded PDFs. ### Try OpenAlex as your paper source Start a new document, choose OpenAlex in the source picker, and ThesisAI builds a library of open access papers for your topic before it writes a word. [Empezar a escribir ](https://www.thesisai.io/es/check-payment/) ## OpenAlex vs Semantic Scholar vs Your Own PDFs Source| Best for| Watch out for ---|---|--- **OpenAlex**| Broad topics, the social sciences and humanities, interdisciplinary work, non-English journals| Very generic prompts pull in loosely related papers; narrow the fields **[Semantic Scholar](https://www.thesisai.io/es/semantic-scholar/)**| Computer science, biomedicine and other fields with heavy preprint and conference output| Thinner coverage in some humanities and regional journals **Upload / Zotero / Mendeley**| A set reading list, papers your supervisor named, or paywalled papers you have access to| The document can only be as broad as the PDFs you provide A useful rule: if you already know which papers must be in the document, upload them. If you want ThesisAI to find the literature, pick the search source whose coverage fits your field, and try the other if the first one comes back thin. A citation is only as good as the text behind it. ThesisAI only keeps papers it can actually read in full, which is why it filters OpenAlex to open access works with a PDF. Why the integration is open access only ## Getting a Better Set of Papers * **Name the concepts, not just the area.** "Remote work and employee wellbeing in SMEs" finds far better papers than "remote work". * **Tick only the fields you mean.** Leaving every field selected searches all of OpenAlex. Two or three fields usually gives the most relevant library. * **Use the year range for fast-moving topics.** For AI, policy or public health topics, a range covering the last five to eight years keeps outdated findings out of the argument. * **Check the library before writing.** If the papers look off-topic, adjust the prompt or fields and search again before you start the document. * **If too few papers are found,** ThesisAI tells you instead of writing from a weak base. Broaden the fields, loosen the year range, or switch source. For the reading that follows, our guides to [writing a literature review](https://www.thesisai.io/es/blog/how-to-write-a-literature-review/) and to [finding a research gap](https://www.thesisai.io/es/blog/how-to-find-a-research-gap/) pick up from here. ## OpenAlex in Claude and ChatGPT The same source is available through the ThesisAI connector for AI assistants. When you ask Claude or ChatGPT to create a document with ThesisAI, it will ask where the sources should come from, and OpenAlex is one of the options. The search, filtering and citation checks run on ThesisAI exactly as they do in the web app. ## Privacy Only search terms derived from your topic, plus the fields and years you select, are sent to OpenAlex. Your account details and your document are never sent. The details are in our [privacy policy](https://www.thesisai.io/es/terms-and-policies/). ## FAQs About OpenAlex in ThesisAI ### Is OpenAlex free to use in ThesisAI? Yes. Choosing OpenAlex as your paper source costs nothing extra; the document uses one credit as any other document does. ### Does ThesisAI cite paywalled papers from OpenAlex? No. It keeps only open access works with a downloadable PDF, because a citation has to be checked against the full text. If you need a paywalled paper, download it through your library and upload it. ### Can I combine OpenAlex with my own PDFs? Each document has one source type, chosen when it starts. If you need specific papers alongside a broad search, upload those papers and the most relevant ones you found. ### Which languages does it search in? The search queries are written in English, which matches the titles and abstracts of most indexed works. Your document itself can still be written in any language ThesisAI supports. ### Should I use OpenAlex or Semantic Scholar? For the social sciences, humanities, education, law and interdisciplinary topics, start with OpenAlex. For computer science and biomedicine, start with Semantic Scholar. Either way, look at the library before writing and switch if it looks thin. OpenAlex makes ThesisAI's automatic literature search work far better outside the technical fields. Give it a precise topic and a narrow set of fields, check the library it builds, and the document that follows is grounded in papers you can open and verify yourself. § End · November 14, 2026 Was this useful? Actions Share post Copiar enlace Print page Topics #openalex #literature-search #open-access J Jonas Berger _· M. Sc._ [All posts](https://www.thesisai.io/es/blog/) ## Continuar _reading._ [ All field notes ](https://www.thesisai.io/es/blog/) [ Writing2026 How to Write a Literature Review Structure, synthesis and the mistakes that cost marks. Read ](https://www.thesisai.io/es/blog/how-to-write-a-literature-review/) [ Research2026 Primary vs Secondary Sources What counts as which, and how to use each in a thesis. Read ](https://www.thesisai.io/es/blog/primary-vs-secondary-sources/) [ Research2026 How to Find a Research Gap Where gaps hide in the literature and how to state one. Read ](https://www.thesisai.io/es/blog/how-to-find-a-research-gap/) ### A short note _every other Tuesday._ Research writing, citation practice, and the tools we're building. No marketing - unsubscribe with one click. By subscribing, you accept the [términos y políticas](https://www.thesisai.io/es/terms-and-policies/). NO SPAM · 2× MONTHLY