Author Search Algorithm for Compatibility Between Local Snapshot and API

[Lorenzo Betti]

Hi all,

Thank you for your continued work on improving OpenAlex — I really appreciate the effort that goes into making it better and better.

I wanted to ask whether it would be possible to access the full algorithm used to compute the relevance score when performing a string-based search.

To give some context: in my research, I often work with a local snapshot of OpenAlex. Occasionally, I need to identify an author’s author_id by searching for their full name. The API’s author name search performs very well for this purpose, but it can sometimes return a different author_id since it queries a newer OpenAlex version than my local snapshot. Having access to the code or logic behind the relevance score computation would help me reproduce the same search behavior locally and maintain compatibility across versions.

Thank you very much for your time and assistance.

Best regards,

Lorenzo Betti