Scholar Citations

Traverse the citation graph of a research paper via OpenAlex. Two directions:

• References — what this paper cites (its intellectual ancestry)
• Citations — what cites this paper (its intellectual descendants)

One subprocess call returns a structured list of papers with titles, abstracts, citation counts, and external IDs.

Usage

# References — what this paper cites
python3 scripts/scholar_citations.py references 2501.11120 --limit 100

# Citations — what cites this paper
python3 scripts/scholar_citations.py citations 2501.11120 --limit 100

# Both at once
python3 scripts/scholar_citations.py both 2501.11120 --limit 50

# Filter to recent, high-impact descendants
python3 scripts/scholar_citations.py citations 1706.03762 \
    --min-year 2024 --min-citations 10 --limit 100

# Accepts many ID formats
python3 scripts/scholar_citations.py citations W4395065622
python3 scripts/scholar_citations.py citations "10.48550/arxiv.2404.14082"
python3 scripts/scholar_citations.py citations "doi:10.48550/arxiv.2404.14082"
python3 scripts/scholar_citations.py citations "https://openalex.org/W4395065622"

Subcommands:

• references <id> — papers cited by the target
• citations <id> — papers citing the target
• both <id> — both directions in one payload

Flags:

• --limit N — max results per direction (default 100)
• --min-year YYYY — drop older entries
• --min-citations N — drop low-impact entries (useful for surfacing important follow-ups)

When to use

• Tracing an idea backward — given a paper, find the key work it builds on (references + --min-citations 50)
• Finding follow-ups — see what built on an important paper (citations + --min-year 2024)
• Gap analysis — intersect references and citations across multiple anchor papers to find unexplored neighborhoods
• Reviewer context — get the citation neighborhood before reviewing a paper

Data completeness caveat

OpenAlex's reference lists are complete for well-indexed papers (journal articles, conference proceedings, older arxiv submissions) but often sparse for very recent preprints. If references returns empty, it's usually OpenAlex data coverage, not a script bug. For arxiv-only ancestry, fall back to parsing the paper's own reference list via arxiv-analyze with --tier tex.

Workflow

1. Identify the anchor paper

Accept OpenAlex W-id, DOI, arxiv id (auto-converts to arxiv's DOI), PMID (as pmid:<n>), or any OpenAlex/DOI URL. The script auto-normalizes.

2. Pick direction

• Understanding how a paper emerged? → references
• Tracking impact or finding new work? → citations
• Building a full neighborhood view? → both

3. Filter aggressively

Reference and citation lists can be 100-1000 entries. Use --min-citations and --min-year generously — 1000 low-signal entries are worse than 20 high-signal ones.

4. Feed into analysis

For each interesting paper: hand off arxiv_id to arxiv-analyze, or use the open_access_pdf URL directly.

Rate limits

OpenAlex is generous: 10 req/sec anonymous, more in the polite pool (set OPENALEX_EMAIL). Script self-throttles at 5 req/sec.

A single references or citations call with --limit 100 is typically 2-3 API requests (one for the root work, one or two for the batched resolution of related works).

Token efficiency

• 100 references/citations ≈ 15K-30K tokens (abstracts dominate)
• For graph exploration where breadth > depth, pipe through jq 'del(.*.abstract)' before feeding to context

Hard rules

• Don't explode the graph. 100 × 100 references-of-references is 10k papers. If you need n-hop traversal, do it in explicit staged passes with user confirmation.
• Respect the rate limit. The script's self-throttle is load-bearing.
• Sparse data is data. If references or citations is empty, report it as empty; don't fabricate.

Requirements

• Python 3.11+ (stdlib only)
• Internet access to api.openalex.org
• Optional: OPENALEX_EMAIL for polite-pool access