EconLit vs OpenAlex
EconLit
aeaweb.orgOpenAlex
openalex.orgSide by side
| Figure | EconLit | OpenAlex |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | $1/mo |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | Yes | — |
| Open source | — | Yes |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| Linux | — | Yes |
| API | — | Yes |
| Self-hosted | — | Yes |
| Plans published | 6 | 9 |
| Spec score · Academic Research Databases | 8.4 (#9) | 8.9 (#2) |
| Support | The AEA directs institutional subscribers to contact their information service provider for help with proprietary search interface questions or support. | Member includes community support, Member+ includes ticket-based help for critical API bugs, and Partner includes full ticket-based support for API and data issues. |
| What it does | EconLit is the American Economic Association’s bibliographic database for economics literature. | OpenAlex is an open index and knowledge graph covering scholarly works, authors, sources, institutions, topics and related entities. |
Plans
EconLit
- EconLit for AEA MembersFree
- EconLit (institutional subscription)Priced on request
- EconLit via EBSCOPriced on request
- EconLit via OvidPriced on request
- EconLit via ProQuestPriced on request
- EconLit with Full TextPriced on request
OpenAlex
- Pay as you go$1 a month
- Member$5,000 a year
- Member+$10,000 a year
- Partner$20,000 a year
- FreeFree
- Pay as you go$1, paid once
- Member$5,000 a year
- Member+$10,000 a year
- Partner$20,000 a year
In their own words
EconLit
EconLit is the American Economic Association’s bibliographic database for economics literature. It covers peer-reviewed journal articles, working papers, PhD dissertations, books, book reviews, and articles in collective volumes. The database contains over 2 million records, covers literature published over the last 140 years, and is updated weekly. Searchable record fields can include title, author, affiliation, publication details, document type, keywords, subject classifications, named persons, and geographic descriptors. Its subject descriptors follow the Journal of Economic Literature classification system, using four-digit codes. Institutional subscriptions are available through EBSCO, ProQuest, and Ovid, which provide the same data through different interfaces. Full-text links depend on library holdings; EconLit with Full Text is available only through EBSCO. AEA members have courtesy access to bibliographic records, but that service has no full-text links and may be phased out. Institutional pricing is supplied by providers; EBSCO offers a trial request without stating its duration.
OpenAlex
OpenAlex is a free and open catalog of scholarly research, with a REST API for querying connected records such as works, authors, sources, institutions, and topics. API users can search, filter, sort, group, page through results, select fields, and retrieve individual entities. The complete database snapshot can be downloaded from Amazon S3 without an AWS account, and the data is released under the CC0 public-domain license. An official command-line tool supports bulk downloads with parallel transfers, checkpoints, rate limiting, retries, and resume. Full-text access provides PDFs and machine-readable TEI XML; each file download costs $0.01. Website exports include CSV, RIS, and TXT, while VOSviewer connects through the API. OpenAlex also offers Unpaywall's legacy-format open-access API, including a browser extension and integrations with SFX, EBSCO Discovery Service, and 360 Link. Its coverage includes journal articles, conference papers, books, chapters, datasets, dissertations, and preprints. OpenAlex is operated by a US 501(c)(3) nonprofit, and its code is open source.