Getting indexed

OpenAlex indexes works — publications, datasets, theses, and so on — by harvesting the big scholarly indexes: Crossref, DataCite, PubMed, and others, plus thousands of repositories. So “getting indexed” means getting your works into a place we already harvest.

How do I get my journal indexed in OpenAlex?

Get your articles into one of the indexes we harvest, and they’ll flow into OpenAlex automatically. For most journals that means registering DOIs through Crossref (or DataCite, for data-heavy publishing). Beyond OpenAlex, DOIs are infrastructure your articles should have anyway — they’re how citations, reference lists, and discovery services link to your work across the whole scholarly ecosystem.

Once your DOIs are registered, no separate OpenAlex submission is needed: new records show up as we harvest.

How do I get my repository indexed in OpenAlex?

Check whether we already harvest you at openalex.org/sources?filter=type:repository; if not, email support@openalex.org with your OAI-PMH endpoint URL and we’ll add it. That’s the whole process: no form, no validator. The full recipe, the endpoint checklist, and how to read your source’s Harvest tab afterwards are on Repositories.

Running a journal on OJS? OJS exposes an OAI-PMH endpoint, so journals often ask to be registered as repositories. Which path fits depends on DOIs. If your articles have Crossref DOIs, nothing more is needed: they arrive through Crossref, with the journal as their source. If they don’t, we can harvest your OJS endpoint like a repository, but matching and metadata are weaker that way, and the lasting fix is still to register DOIs.

My journal or repository is indexed, but works are missing. What now?

For repositories, this is common and usually isn’t a harvesting failure — see Repositories for how to troubleshoot coverage. For journals, check that the missing articles have registered DOIs; if they do and they’re still absent after a few weeks, file a support request with a few example DOIs.