search_by_topic
Search scholarly works by research topic. Filter by venue, year, citation count, institution, and more. Supports exact phrase matching and field-specific searches for precise literature discovery.
Instructions
Search for works within specific research topics or domains. Use this to explore literature in a particular field or subfield. Supports venue filtering to restrict results to top journals/conferences.
Input Schema
TableJSON Schema
| Name | Required | Description | Default |
|---|---|---|---|
| topic | Yes | Topic name or keywords to search for (e.g., "artificial intelligence", "climate change", "quantum computing"). For exact phrase matching (e.g., 'privacy paradox' as a specific concept), set exact_phrase to true. | |
| exact_phrase | No | Set to true for exact phrase matching. Without this, search terms are matched independently. Use this when searching for a specific concept or multi-word term (e.g., 'privacy paradox', 'supply chain resilience'). | |
| search_field | No | Restrict search to a specific field: 'title' (paper titles only), 'abstract' (abstracts only), or 'fulltext' (full text only). By default, searches across all fields. Cannot be combined with exact_phrase. | |
| from_year | No | Filter works from this year onwards | |
| to_year | No | Filter works up to this year | |
| source_name | No | Restrict to a specific journal or conference by name (e.g., "Nature", "ICML", "PNAS") | |
| source_issn | No | Restrict to a specific journal/conference by ISSN (most precise) | |
| min_citations | No | Minimum citation count threshold to filter low-impact papers | |
| author_institution | No | Filter by author institution (exact OpenAlex display_name). Use | for OR, e.g., "Harvard University|Stanford University" | |
| institution_group | No | Named institution group preset. Options: harvard_stanford_mit, ivy_league, top_us, top_us_business, insead_london, top_global_business, top_china. Use list_journal_presets to see all. | |
| sort | No | Sort by: cited_by_count:desc, publication_year:desc, relevance_score (default) | |
| per_page | No | Results per page (default: 10, use 20 for broader coverage, max 200) |