Hi Amy,

We use the OpenAlex API and data dump in our Citation Index
<https://ci.lib.ncsu.edu/> as one of our primary metadata sources. The API
is easy to use. The data is constantly improving. You can start for free.

I can recommend OpenAlex for the most part, but maybe not their categories.
It probably depends on what you hope to do with them.

We found the category fields to have limited use in several analysis
projects. If you want a general idea of the area of work, then they're
alright. They're high level and don't always match how our faculty might
categorize their own work. I got responses like, "Yeah, I guess you could
say my work falls into that category." The categories just did not seem
compelling for getting a summary overview of the works we were looking at.
You can read more about how they generated their categories
<https://docs.google.com/document/d/1bDopkhuGieQ4F8gGNj7sEc8WSE8mvLZS/edit?pli=1>
to
better understand the limitations.

I do not know of a good open solution that is better than the OpenAlex
categories. The OpenAlex categories are too high level, and as you know
author keywords are too granular and long tail. If you want to dive into
ecosystem studies without going all the way down to author keywords, then I
don't know that the OpenAlex categories will help. To fill this gap in the
middle, we've tried semantic topic modeling to answer some of our questions
and continue to experiment with that approach.

Jason

On Mon, Jun 29, 2026 at 1:23 PM Amy Schuler <
[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> Hi all,
> I have access to the web of science starter api (formerly known as api
> lite), but it is not sufficient for my needs.  Specifically I'm looking to
> use the WC field tag (subject category), which is not supported by the web
> of science api.
> I'm looking into a subscription to the web of science expanded api, which
> does support use of the WC tag.
> Since the (free) openalex API supports use of the category fields
> (field/subfield/topic tags), I am wondering if anyone can comment on how
> the openalex api compares to the wos expanded api, generally speaking.
> Feel free to answer off-list.
> THANKS!
>
> --
>
> Amy C. Schuler (she/her)
> Director, Information Services & Library
>
> Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies | 2801 Sharon Turnpike | Millbrook, NY
> www.caryinstitute.org
>