Licenses
A license describes the terms under which an open-access copy of a work may be reused — cc-by, cc-by-nc-nd, public-domain, and so on. Licenses are a vocabulary: OpenAlex doesn’t invent the concept of a CC-BY license, it just attaches a consistent handle to each recognized one. A license is a property of a location (each copy of a work can have its own license), so you’ll see a license on a work’s primary_location and in its locations. A license’s OpenAlex ID looks like https://openalex.org/licenses/cc-by; fetch one at api.openalex.org/licenses/cc-by.
How we build it
The list is the set of licenses OpenAlex recognizes: the Creative Commons suite (CC-BY and its variants, plus CC0 / public domain), a handful of common software/open-source licenses (MIT, Apache 2.0, GPL, ISC), and two catch-alls (other-oa, publisher-specific-oa) for openly-readable copies whose exact terms we can’t pin to a specific license. There are 14 licenses.
Values
The complete list of all 14 licenses:
| ID | Display name | Terms |
|---|---|---|
cc-by |
CC-BY | Reuse with credit, including commercial use |
cc-by-sa |
CC-BY-SA | Reuse with credit; adaptations keep the same license |
cc-by-nd |
CC-BY-ND | Sharing with credit, no adaptations |
cc-by-nc |
CC-BY-NC | Reuse with credit, non-commercial only |
cc-by-nc-sa |
CC-BY-NC-SA | Non-commercial reuse with credit; adaptations keep the same license |
cc-by-nc-nd |
CC-BY-NC-ND | Sharing with credit, no commercial use, no adaptations |
public-domain |
public domain (CC0) | No rights reserved |
mit |
MIT | Permissive; preserve copyright notice |
apache-2-0 |
Apache License 2.0 | Permissive; copyright notices + patent grant |
gpl-v2 |
GNU GPLv2 | Copyleft |
gpl-v3 |
GNU GPLv3 | Copyleft; modified versions stay open under the same terms |
isc |
ISC License | Permissive; equivalent to MIT / BSD 2-Clause |
other-oa |
other open access | Looks open, but we don’t have the specific license listed |
publisher-specific-oa |
publisher specific open access | Open access under a publisher-specific license |
The live list is at api.openalex.org/licenses.
Fields
The top-level fields on a license object. Fields shared with other entities (id, display_name, works_count, cited_by_count, created_date, updated_date) are documented once on Common fields.
id
String. The OpenAlex ID for this license, e.g. https://openalex.org/licenses/cc-by. See Common fields.
display_name
String. The license’s name, e.g. CC-BY. See Common fields.
url
String. A link to the canonical license text (a Creative Commons deed or an SPDX page), or null for the catch-all licenses that have no single URL.
description
String. A short plain-language summary of the reuse terms.
works_count
Integer. How many works have a location under this license. See Common fields.
cited_by_count
Integer. Total citations across those works. See Common fields.
works_api_url
String. A ready-made Works API URL for every work with a location under this license (filter=locations.license_id:licenses/<ID>).
created_date
String. When the license record was added to OpenAlex (YYYY-MM-DD). See Common fields.
updated_date
String. When the license record last changed. See Common fields.
In the API
The Licenses endpoint is at api.openalex.org/licenses. Fetch one by ID — /licenses/cc-by — or list them all.
Licenses are most useful as a filter on works, keyed to a location: filter=primary_location.license:cc-by matches works whose best copy is CC-BY, filter=locations.license:cc-by matches works with any CC-BY copy, and group_by=primary_location.license breaks a result set down by license. See Filtering for the full syntax and the endpoints index for every endpoint.