Using Scopus and OpenAlex APIs to retrieve bibliographic data for evidence synthesis. A procedure based on Bash and SQL

Abstract

Evidence synthesis methodologies rely on bibliographic data. The process of searching and retrieving bibliographic data can be supported by using bibliographic APIs. This paper presents a collection of code that serves both as a recipe book and a finished working example of how to interact with Scopus and OpenAlex APIs for the purpose of supporting evidence synthesis. While the procedure and code base presented here were developed as part of an evidence synthesis project in the field of nutrient recovery from human excreta and domestic wastewater for reuse in agriculture, the procedure and code base should be useful more broadly for evidence syntheses or bibliographic analyses also in other fields.•This paper presents a working example of how to interact with Scopus and OpenAlex APIs•The code base is written in SQL (MySQL) and Unix Shell (Bash)•The procedure was developed in an MacOS environment but should be portable to other environments