OpenAlex 2026-09 at MultiOBS: what's new

The September 2026 OpenAlex snapshot is now available on the MultiOBS BigQuery project, as an open-access relational model:

multiobs.publicdb_openalex_2026_09_rm

All you need to query it is a Google account and a Google Cloud project. Below are the main additions compared with the previous release (2026-01), plus three example queries to get you started.

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What’s new

Research funding

A whole new set of tables on research funding:

Table	Content
awards	Grants: amount, currency, start and end dates, type and funder
awards_investigators	Principal investigators, with ORCID and affiliation
awards_institutions_awarded	Institutions awarded
awards_funded_outputs	Works resulting from each grant
works_funders / works_awards	Funders and grants acknowledged in each work

Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

Table	Content
sdgs	The 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals
works_sdgs	Works linked to each SDG, with a relevance score

Countries and the Global South

Table	Content
countries	Countries, including the is_global_south flag
continents / continents_countries	Continents and their countries
works_authorships_countries	Countries of each authorship

New source (journal) indicators

The sources table now includes:

• is_in_scielo — journal indexed in SciELO
• is_core, is_ojs, is_preprint_repository
• is_high_oa_rate, oa_flip_year
• first_publication_year, last_publication_year
• h_index, i10_index, two_year_mean_citedness

Other additions

• works_authors: every authorship, with ORCID, author position and corresponding author
• works_abstracts and works_apc (list price and amount paid)
• is_in_top_1_percent and is_in_top_10_percent indicators in works
• Lookup tables: languages, licenses, work_types, source_types, institution_types and keywords

Example queries

1. Works by SDG

%%bigquery --project=multiobs
SELECT work_id, sdg_id, display_name, score
FROM `multiobs.publicdb_openalex_2026_09_rm.works_sdgs`
LIMIT 5

Result:

work_id	sdg_id	display_name	score
7165789293	12	Responsible consumption and production	0.442
7124426834	3	Good health and well-being	0.599
4404332339	5	Gender equality	0.430
4312605329	11	Sustainable cities and communities	0.690
7128838767	14	Life below water	0.620

%%bigquery df --project=multiobs
SELECT display_name AS sdg,
    COUNT(DISTINCT work_id) AS works
FROM `multiobs.publicdb_openalex_2026_09_rm.works_sdgs`
GROUP BY display_name
ORDER BY works DESC

ax = df.plot(x="sdg", y="works", kind="barh", legend=False)
ax.ticklabel_format(style="plain", axis="x")
ax.invert_yaxis()ax.set_xlabel("Number of works")
ax.set_ylabel("")

2. Output with Global South participation

%%bigquery --project=multiobs
SELECT country_code, display_name, is_global_south
FROM `multiobs.publicdb_openalex_2026_09_rm.countries`
LIMIT 5

Result:

country_code	display_name	is_global_south
SH	Saint Helena	False
YT	Mayotte	False
ZM	Zambia	True
CD	DR Congo	True
CG	Congo	True

%%bigquery df --project=multiobs
WITH articles AS (
  SELECT w.publication_year,
      COUNTIF(c.is_global_south) AS south,
      COUNT(*) AS total
  FROM `multiobs.publicdb_openalex_2026_09_rm.works` w
  JOIN `multiobs.publicdb_openalex_2026_09_rm.works_authorships_countries` a
    ON a.work_id = w.id
  JOIN `multiobs.publicdb_openalex_2026_09_rm.countries` c
    ON c.country_code = a.country_code
  WHERE w.type = 'article'
      AND w.countries_distinct_count > 1
      AND w.publication_year BETWEEN 2000 AND 2025
  GROUP BY w.id, w.publication_year
)
SELECT publication_year,
    100 * COUNTIF(south = total) / COUNT(*) AS south_south,
    100 * COUNTIF(south > 0 AND south < total) / COUNT(*) AS north_south,
    100 * COUNTIF(south = 0) / COUNT(*) AS north_north
FROM articles
GROUP BY publication_year
ORDER BY publication_year

df = df.rename(columns={
    "south_south": "South–South",
    "north_south": "North–South",
    "north_north": "North–North",
})
ax = df.plot(x="publication_year", kind="area")
ax.set_xlabel("")
ax.set_ylabel("Share of internationally co-authored articles (%)")

3. Journals indexed in SciELO

%%bigquery --project=multiobs
SELECT id, display_name, issn_l, country_code, is_in_scielo
FROM `multiobs.publicdb_openalex_2026_09_rm.sources`
WHERE is_in_scielo
LIMIT 5

Result:

id	display_name	issn_l	country_code	is_in_scielo
164433490	Sociedad (Buenos Aires)	0327-7712		True
71069940	Revista Fuerzas Armadas y Sociedad	0717-1498		True
4306526289	Revista chilena de estudios medievales	0719-2215	CL	True
4210235052	Revista de Humanidades y Ciencias Sociales	1819-0545	BO	True
5407052847	Fruit Crops Science Journal	3085-8909		True

%%bigquery df --project=multiobs
SELECT w.publication_year, COUNT(*) AS works
FROM `multiobs.publicdb_openalex_2026_09_rm.works` w
JOIN `multiobs.publicdb_openalex_2026_09_rm.sources` s
  ON s.id = w.primary_source_id
WHERE s.is_in_scielo
  AND w.publication_year BETWEEN 2000 AND 2025
GROUP BY w.publication_year
ORDER BY w.publication_year

df.plot(x="publication_year", y="works", legend=False)