It’s a big week at OpenAlex. On Monday, we announced that OpenAlex is now our top-level brand (and retired the “OurResearch” name). Yesterday we unveiled our new logo. And today, we’re thrilled to launch the beta release of our fully-rewritten codebase (codenamed Walden)!

Walden is faster, bigger, and more maintainable–that means quicker bug fixes, more content, easier feature development, and a smoother experience all around.

Throughout October, we’ll be running Walden and the old system (Classic) side by side, with Classic remaining the default. On November 1 2025, Walden becomes default, and we’ll publish the last data snapshot from the old system (more info on timelines here).

How to test-drive Walden

Walden beta is already live in the API and UI so you can start exploring it right away!

• In the UI: click the little 🧪 test-tube icon in the top right (or click here).
• In the API: just add data-version=2 to your request, like this: https://api.openalex.org/works?data-version=2.
• In OREO: Compare Classic to Walden using the OpenAlex Rewrite Evaluation Overview (OREO, yum). Using OREO you can see exactly what’s changed (good and bad), view known issues, and track our continuous improvements throughout our October beta

Just remember that it’s still in beta: there are lots of known issues and it’s changing every day. If you notice an that’s not already in OREO tests or known issues, report it here.

Key improvements

When you check it out, what should you expect to see? The best way to view a list of improvements is to check out the tests in OREO, especially work tests. But here’s a high-level overview:

• 150M+ new works: Newly indexed articles, books, datasets, software, dissertations, and more! You can explore just the newly added works here.
• Better consistency: Unpaywall and OpenAlex will now always agree.
• Better metadata: more citations, more language and retraction coverage, better keywords, more OA data.

Looking Ahead

The last year of rewriting OpenAlex was tough. We couldn’t move as fast as we wanted on new features, and support often lagged. But now we’re equipped to move fast without breaking things. Expect faster improvements, better support, and more ambitious features dropping in Q4, including:

• Community curation: fix mistakes (like in Wikipedia) and see them reflected in days.
• Vector search endpoint: find relevant works and other entities based on semantic similarity of free-form text
• Download endpoint: Access PDF text from DOI or OpenAlex ID
• Better funding metadata: New grants entity with better coverage of grant objects and linkages to research outputs and funders

This is a turning point for OpenAlex—and we’re excited to build the future of research infrastructure together with you. The engine’s rebuilt. The road ahead is wide open. Let’s go.

PS want to learn more about Walden? Come to our webinar Oct 7th at 10am Eastern. You can register to attend here.