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Changelog

Source: NEWS.md

openalexR (development version)

  • Recorded OpenAlex’s new apc_usd_by_year field for the sources entity in oa2df_coverage. It is listed as a known field that oa2df() does not surface, so get_coverage("sources") no longer under-reports the API.
  • Dropped support for the mailto polite pool, which OpenAlex retired in February 2026 and now ignores. oa_email() and the openalexR.mailto option are gone, and mailto is no longer sent to the API. The mailto argument of oa_fetch(), oa_request() and oa_snowball() is kept as a deprecated no-op that warns – removing it outright would turn mailto = into a silent, bogus filter, since oa_fetch() collects filters via .... Use options(openalexR.apikey = ) instead.
  • show_works() and show_authors() no longer fail with incorrect number of dimensions when given NULL – which is what oa_fetch() returns when a query matches no records or a request fails. They now warn and return a zero-row tibble, and give an informative error for input that is not a data frame or is missing required columns (#368).
  • oa_fetch() and friends now retry transient HTTP responses – 429 (Too Many Requests) and the 502/503/504 gateway errors – with exponential backoff, honoring the Retry-After header when the API sends one. Configure with options(openalexR.max_tries = ) (default 3, max 10) and options(openalexR.max_wait = ) (default 30 seconds), or the equivalent openalexR.max_tries / openalexR.max_wait environment variables. Set openalexR.max_tries = 1 to disable retrying (#368).
  • Failed HTTP requests (429, 503, and other non-200 statuses) now emit a warning rather than a message, so they are no longer easy to miss in scripts, reports, and knitted documents. If you relied on suppressMessages() to quiet these, use suppressWarnings() instead (#368).
  • oa_request() now warns when the API returns an empty body instead of quietly returning an empty list (#368).
  • Fixed HTTP error handling for paged requests: a 4xx/5xx or 503 response during paging previously raised an internal jsonlite error instead of the intended OpenAlex error message.
  • Fixed oa_fetch() discarding results when the first chunk of a filter with more than 50 values came back empty.
  • The pkgdown articles are now precomputed from .Rmd.orig sources, so building the documentation site no longer calls the OpenAlex API. Run Rscript data-raw/precompute-articles.R (or the precompute-articles GitHub Action) after editing an article (#368).
  • sources2df() now includes the new is_preprint_repository field returned by the OpenAlex sources endpoint.

openalexR 3.1.0

CRAN release: 2026-07-03

  • New oa_options() constructor for building the options argument of oa_fetch() and oa_query(). It provides argument autocompletion, defaults, and validation (e.g. catches misspelled options and out-of-range sample/per_page), while a plain list() is still accepted for backward compatibility (#182).
  • Paging parameters per_page, paging, and pages are now set through options = oa_options(...). Passing them as top-level arguments to oa_fetch() is deprecated but still works (with a warning).
  • oa_fetch() now errors when more than one filter has over 50 values, since only one such filter can be chunked per call.

openalexR 3.0.1

CRAN release: 2026-01-14

  • Fix CRAN R CMD check issues

openalexR 3.0.0

CRAN release: 2026-01-10

  • Updates for new OpenAlex Walden data-version=2
  • Add cli to Imports

openalexR 2.0.2

CRAN release: 2025-10-21

  • Fix CRAN R CMD check issues

openalexR 2.0.0

CRAN release: 2025-04-05

  • Breaking changes in column names in the output of oa_fetch:

    • Works:
      • so is now source_display_name
      • so_id is now source_id
      • host_organization now contains the id of the host organization
      • host_organization_name now contains the name of the host organization
      • ab is now abstract
      • url is now landing_page_url
      • author is now authorships
      • the nested columns under authors no longer have the au prefix
      • New columns: fwci, referenced_works_count, keywords
    • Authors:
      • affiliation* is removed
      • New columns: last_known_institutions, 2yr_mean_citedness, h_index, i10_index

  • Removed concepts as an entity

  • Added keywords as an entity

  • Added get_coverage() to track the oa2df-mapped columns of OpenAlex fields

  • Deprecated oa2bibliometrix(). Use bibliometrix::convert2df() (from the bibliometrix R package) instead.

openalexR 1.4.0

CRAN release: 2024-07-11

  • “topics” are now a valid entity in oa_fetch
  • The column “topics” replaces concepts in most entities’ returned dataframes
  • For Works, “topics” and “concepts” are now returned as separate columns

openalexR 1.3.1

CRAN release: 2024-05-08

  • solved bug in au_affiliation_raw in PR#241

openalexR 1.3.0

CRAN release: 2024-05-03

  • Breaking change: two arguments in oa_snowball are renamed: citing_filter is now citing_params, and cited_by_filter is now cited_by_params.
  • Introduced oa_generate: A generator function to make request to OpenAlex API and returns one record at a time.
  • Fixed queries with group_by.
  • Improved paging control: the user can now specify the pages they want in oa_fetch or oa_request.
  • Improve oa_snowball performance.
  • Allowed the use of options$sample with search.
  • “venues” is no longer a valid value for entity. Use “sources” instead.

openalexR 1.2.2

CRAN release: 2023-09-24

  • solved issue with CRAN test

openalexR 1.2.1

CRAN release: 2023-09-01

  • many improvements in bibliometrix support
  • solved issue with CRAN test

openalexR 1.2.0

CRAN release: 2023-08-08

  • many improvements in oa_snowball
  • added new openalex entities
  • solved CRAN issue about packageVersion()

openalexR 1.1.0

CRAN release: 2023-05-04

  • Basic paging is applied when using options$sample
  • Bug fixes for rbind in oa2df

openalexR 1.0.2.9

CRAN release: 2023-04-01

  • Breaking change: Reorder of the first two arguments in oa_fetch: entity now comes before idenfitifier. This should not affect your workflow too much unless you have been getting article information from OpenAlex IDs.
  • new arguments to oa_fetch: sample and seed allows the user to download a random subset of the entities instead of the entire set.
  • oa_ngrams gets you N-grams of works
  • abstract now defaults to TRUE to avoid issues.
  • New argument to oa_fetch: api_key
  • Arguments sample, seed, sort, and select are now grouped into options.
  • Bug fixes
  • Improved documentation: group functions in Reference, details on search, etc.

openalexR 1.0.1

  • Improve snowball #9.
  • Batch queries when a filter has more than 50 values #18.
  • Bug fixes.
  • Added a NEWS.md file to track changes to the package.

openalexR 1.0.0

CRAN release: 2022-10-06

  • Breaking change: now uses a more canonical way to filter #7.
  • In oa_fetch, abstract now defaults to FALSE to save compute/query time/space. You will need to set abstract = TRUE to retrieve abstracts for the articles.
  • Added website, hex.
  • Added tests.
  • Added R CMD CHECK as a GH Action
  • Bug fixes.
  • Added vignettes.

openalexR 0.0.2

  • Some bug fixes

openalexR 0.0.1

CRAN release: 2022-04-22

  • First CRAN release