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Source note · Science and environment

Research Papers

Research papers from every field, with their authors, their journal and what cites them, and their full text when it is open access. Every paper comes with its DOI.

Today, nearly 3 in 4 research papers are free to read. In 2000, 1 in 6.186 million papers, from 1950 to 2025 · one column per year · one dot for 10,000 papers

paywalledfree to read

OpenAlex · papers and reviews (the tool’s default filter) by year of publication · free: any open-access status (oa_status: gold, green, hybrid, bronze, diamond) · rounded to the nearest dot1Public data · drawn, nothing generated
2020is the first year when more than half of the papers published are free to read.
29 timesas many papers in 2025 as in 1950: 7,488,401 compared with 258,591.
56%of the papers have their abstract in OpenAlex; when it is missing, the tool says so.

Who publishes this data

OpenAlex

OpenAlex is a free and open catalog of the world’s research, built by a nonprofit team registered in the United States. Launched in 2022 to take over from Microsoft Academic Graph, it publishes its data under a CC0 license.5

For this sourceThe same team created Unpaywall, the index of open-access papers. Aureole searches and counts in OpenAlex, and asks Unpaywall for a paper’s legal PDF.5

openalex.org

EMBL-EBIEuropean Bioinformatics Institute of the European Molecular Biology Laboratory

EMBL-EBI makes biology data and tools available to everyone. It is one of EMBL’s six sites, an intergovernmental organization funded by more than 30 countries, and is based on the Wellcome Genome Campus, near Cambridge.5

For this sourceIt hosts Europe PMC, a partner of PubMed Central backed by a group of research funders: Aureole reads the full text of life-science papers there.5

ebi.ac.uk
The catalog
OpenAlexevery field, under a CC0 license
Papers and reviews
202,101,807in OpenAlex2
Open access
Unpaywallthe legal PDF, when there is one
Full text
Europe PMCEMBL-EBI, life sciences
Updated
With every questionthe counts are read when you ask
Access
Freeno account · a free OpenAlex key, optional, raises the limit7

01The reach

All of science, field by field, with medicine in the lead.

Ask what research knows about a subject, in any field: Aureole tells you how many papers match, then gives you the most relevant ones with their authors, their journal and their link. Each rectangle is a field, the one of the papers’ main topic; a paper with no main topic isn’t placed anywhere.

One dot = one million papers · OpenAlex, papers and reviews by the field of their main topic (primary_topic.field) · the first one highlighted
328,192,191documents listed by OpenAlex, of every kind2
61%of the papers and reviews have a DOI2
49,106,953documents in Europe PMC2
12,434,290full texts in Europe PMC2

02What you get

Three questions, three answers from the source.

Ask Aureole: the answers below are the ones the source returned.3

You ask

Which paper on teenagers’ sleep should I read first, since 2020?

The source returns

“How Are Adolescents Sleeping?”

Journal of Adolescent Health · 2020 · 263 citations
the first of the papers ranked by relevance

What you get

The most relevant first

The search ranks papers by relevance. Aureole gives you the first ones with their authors, their journal, their year, their number of citations and their link.

You ask

How many works does the AlphaFold paper cite?

The source returns

86 references

OpenAlex · Nature, 2021
most cited first, 50 read at a time

What you get

Citations, both ways

The tool looks up a paper’s references, or the papers that cite it, most cited first. When it reads only some of them, it says so.

You ask

Can you summarize the AlphaFold paper for me?

The source returns

Yes, from the full text

OpenAlex · abstract not shared by the publisher
full text in Europe PMC (PMC8371605, 20 sections)

What you get

The full text, when the abstract is missing

The publisher doesn’t allow this abstract to be shared: the tool says so. The paper is open access, and Europe PMC hosts its full text, which Aureole can read section by section.

Answers read at the source on October 21, 2026, as examples: sources update, and Aureole reads the current answer when you ask.

03What makes a figure checkable

A checkable count answers six questions.

A model can write “AlphaFold has been cited 43,443 times.” For that figure to be checked, you need to know which paper it is, who wrote it, where and when it appeared, who counts the citations, on what date, and how to find the paper.3

Which paper?
AlphaFoldHighly accurate protein structure prediction with AlphaFold
Who wrote it?
John Jumperand 33 coauthors
Where, when?
NatureJuly 15, 2021

43,443

citations · counted on October 21, 2026

Who counts?
OpenAlexthe papers that cite it
On what date?
October 21, 2026the day of the reading
How to check it again?
Its DOI10.1038/s41586-021-03819-2

In Aureole, the links come with every paper.

Every paper comes with its DOI, its OpenAlex link and, when there is one, the link to the open-access PDF. For a given paper, Aureole asks Unpaywall for the best legal copy. A missing abstract is flagged as such.4

This tool doesn’t record its readings in the “Data read” footer: the links are in the answer, paper by paper.

What comes with every paper

1
Title, authors, journal and date
2
Citations · references
counted by OpenAlex
3
DOI and OpenAlex link
doi.org/10.1038/s41586-021-03819-2
4
Open-access PDF
if there is one, checked with Unpaywall for a given paper

From the tool’s answer, as the app’s code puts it together.

04Where it comes from

From the journal to your conversation.

A paper passes through several hands before it reaches your conversation. Each one is identified: you know who wrote the paper, who catalogs it, and where to read its text.

They write

Researchers and journals

Researchers publish their papers in journals, open archives and preprint servers.

They catalog

OpenAlex

OpenAlex lists papers, their authors, their journals and the citations between them, under a CC0 license.

They open up

Unpaywall and Europe PMC

Unpaywall finds the legal open-access copy of a paper; Europe PMC hosts the full text of life-science papers.

Aureole

It reads

Aureole, on your Mac

When you ask a question, Aureole queries OpenAlex, then Unpaywall or Europe PMC for a given paper. It sends only the search words or the DOI; your conversation isn’t sent to these services.

DepthThe history of the three services6

  1. 2007UK PubMed Central · launched in Manchester
  2. 2012Europe PMC · the service takes this name
  3. 2015Microsoft Academic Graph · published by Microsoft Research
  4. 2017Unpaywall · launched by Impactstory
  5. 2022OpenAlex · takes over from Microsoft Academic Graph

05Limits

What the source doesn’t cover.

And the precautions to take before drawing conclusions.

Without a key, a shared daily budget

Without a key, OpenAlex gives each IP address a free daily budget, shared by the devices on the same network; each request uses up part of it. A free key multiplies it by 10, for you alone. When the budget runs out, the tool says so.7

Full text, mostly in the life sciences

Europe PMC mostly hosts biomedical papers. For the others, Aureole gives the link to the open-access PDF when Unpaywall finds one.

A mostly English-language index

A search gives better results with English words. When the results come mostly from other languages, the tool suggests rephrasing in English.4

What the tool reads at once

A search returns at most 25 papers, and the tool resolves at most 50 of a paper’s references at a time. Full text is cut at 15,000 characters; the tool can read up to 60,000, and says when it cuts.4

On as soon as it’s installedNo account. A free OpenAlex key, optional, goes in Settings → Providers → OpenAlex; Aureole can also request one by email.
Settings→ Data sources→ Science and environment

Read the research literature from your Mac.

Aureole is a Mac app. Download it and ask your question: it looks for papers in OpenAlex, follows their citations, and reads the full text when it is open access.

Download for Mac
Show the 7 sources for this noteHide the sources
  1. OpenAlex, reading of October 21, 2026: papers and reviews (type:article|review) published from 1950 to 2025, grouped by year of publication for each open-access status (closed, bronze, hybrid, green, gold, diamond); one dot for 10,000 papers, rounded. OpenAlex API.
  2. On October 21, 2026: 328,192,191 documents in OpenAlex, including 202,101,807 papers and reviews, 113,143,340 with an abstract, 122,565,004 with a DOI, 69,955,573 open access; 4,516 topics in 26 fields; Europe PMC: 49,106,953 documents, 12,434,290 full texts. The no-key budget is the one OpenAlex’s API states in each response. OpenAlex, pricing, Europe PMC, About.
  3. Answers read on October 21, 2026 through the requests the tool builds: the search “adolescent sleep” since 2020, by relevance; the AlphaFold paper in OpenAlex, Unpaywall and Europe PMC. Search, AlphaFold.
  4. The types kept by default, the reading limits, the language signal and the absence of any entry in the “Data read” footer: the code of Aureole’s Research Papers tool (ResearchNativeToolProvider).
  5. Who publishes this data: the official pages of OpenAlex, EMBL-EBI and Europe PMC, checked on October 17, 2026. OpenAlex, About, EMBL-EBI, About us, Europe PMC, About.
  6. The timeline: UK PubMed Central launched on January 9, 2007, renamed Europe PMC in November 2012; Microsoft Academic Graph published in 2015; Unpaywall launched on April 4, 2017; OpenAlex, the successor to Microsoft Academic Graph, launched in 2022. Checked on October 17, 2026. University of Manchester, UK PubMed Central launched, Wellcome, July 12, 2012, Europe PMC, Nucleic Acids Research 2015, Microsoft Research, Microsoft Academic Graph, LSE Impact Blog, April 4, 2017, LSE Research Online, archived copy, OpenAlex, About.
  7. The optional key: OpenAlex’s documentation, checked on October 17, 2026 (simple requests without a key, daily budget multiplied by 10 with a free key), and Aureole’s code (KeyedDataProviderRegistry.openalex: optional key, can be requested by email). OpenAlex, API Authentication.