Source types
A source type classifies the kind of venue where works are hosted: a journal, a repository, a conference proceedings, a book series, an ebook platform. Every source has exactly one type, exposed as its type field, chosen from the short controlled vocabulary below. Because a venue’s kind already exists crisply in the real world, source types are a vocabulary entity: OpenAlex doesn’t adjudicate what a source is, it just standardizes the label so you can filter and group by it reliably. Source types use short, human-readable IDs (journal, repository) rather than the minted W/A/S scheme; a type’s full ID looks like https://openalex.org/source-types/journal.
How we build it
The vocabulary is a small, fixed set of venue kinds. OpenAlex assigns each source a single type from the list below based on its metadata and origin (journals and their ISSNs from Crossref and the DOAJ, repositories from their harvested registries, and so on). We don’t decide the boundary between a journal and a repository; we standardize the label. See the Sources guide for more.
Values
The complete controlled vocabulary (live from api.openalex.org/source-types). The display_name for each type is identical to its ID.
| ID | Definition |
|---|---|
journal |
Peer-reviewed periodicals like Nature or The Lancet that publish research on a regular schedule. |
repository |
Open archives like Zenodo, PubMed, and Figshare where researchers deposit papers, data, and preprints. |
ebook platform |
Digital platforms hosting scholarly books and monographs. |
book series |
Numbered collections of scholarly books published under a shared series title. |
conference |
Proceedings and abstracts from academic conferences, like IEEE and IOP Conference Series. |
other |
Sources that don’t fit the standard categories above. |
Fields
Each source type is a small object. Fields shared with other entities are documented once on Common fields.
id
String. The OpenAlex ID for this type, e.g. https://openalex.org/source-types/journal. See Common fields.
display_name
String. The human-readable name of the type — identical to the ID’s final segment (journal, repository). See Common fields.
description
String. A one-line definition of the type (the same text shown in the Values table above).
works_count
Integer. How many works have a location whose source is of this type. See Common fields.
cited_by_count
Integer. Total citations across all works hosted by sources of this type. See Common fields.
works_api_url
String. A ready-made Works API URL listing every work hosted by a source of this type, e.g. https://api.openalex.org/works?filter=locations.source.type:journal.
created_date
String. The date this type was added to OpenAlex (YYYY-MM-DD). See Common fields.
updated_date
String. The ISO 8601 UTC timestamp of the last change to this type object. See Common fields.
In the API
The source-types endpoint is at api.openalex.org/source-types; fetch a single type by ID at /source-types/journal. To filter sources themselves by type, use filter=type:journal on the sources endpoint. To filter works by the type of venue that hosts them, filter on the source’s type through a location: filter=locations.source.type:repository (or primary_location.source.type for just the primary venue). See Filtering for filter syntax and the endpoints index for all endpoints.