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Changelog

Source: NEWS.md

openalexR (development version)

openalexR 3.1.2

CRAN release: 2026-10-14

  • Fixed oa2df() failing with “Column name doi must not be duplicated” after OpenAlex added doi (and other fields) to location objects. Only the known location fields are now kept from primary_location (#372).
  • Updated field coverage for works (primary_location.doi, primary_location.raw_source_name, primary_location.raw_type, primary_location.source.listed_in, and top-level volume) and authors (ids.observed_orcids). These are recorded as known API fields that oa2df() does not surface.

openalexR 3.1.1

CRAN release: 2026-10-09

  • show_works() now combines multiple first or last author names into one string instead of failing during simplification.
  • Updated field coverage for works (study_designs and sustainable_development_goals_aurora), authors (observed_orcids), and topics (legacy_keywords), and sources (listed_in). These fields are recorded as known API fields that oa2df() does not surface.
  • Keyword conversion now preserves nested fields (ids, primary_topic, topics, and display_name_alternatives) as list columns, keeping one row per keyword with the current OpenAlex response format.
  • 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