Command line examples¶

After downloading the Crossref data, the functionality of alexandria3k can be used through its CLI named a3k. Below are isolated examples of command-line invocations demonstrating particular aspects of alexandria3k. You can find examples of complete proof-of-concept studies in the examples directory.

Obtain list of available commands¶

a3k help

Show DOI and title of all publications¶

a3k query crossref 'April 2024 Public Data File from Crossref' \
   --query 'SELECT DOI, title FROM works'

Save DOI and title of 2021 publications in a CSV file suitable for Excel¶

a3k query crossref 'April 2024 Public Data File from Crossref' \
  --query 'SELECT DOI, title FROM works WHERE published_year = 2021' \
  --output 2021.csv \
  --output-encoding utf-8-sig

Show Crossref publications with more than 50 authors¶

This query works by joining the works table with the work_authors table. The --partition option specifies that this join can be performed separately on each container file, allowing the query’s execution in a single pass. Without this option, the query would take millenia to complete.

Count Crossref publications by year and type¶

This query performs a single pass through the data set to obtain the number of Crossref publications by year and publication type.

a3k query crossref 'April 2024 Public Data File from Crossref' \
   --query-file count-year-type.sql >results.csv

where count-year-type.sql contains:

WITH counts AS (
  SELECT
    published_year AS year,
    type,
    Count(*) AS number
FROM   works
    GROUP by published_year, type)

SELECT year AS name, Sum(number) FROM counts
  GROUP BY year
UNION
SELECT type AS name, Sum(number) FROM counts
  GROUP BY type

Fill a table with a query’s results¶

The following commands create a table of citations to publications containing the word “blockchain” in their title.

rm blockchain_citations.db

sqlite3 blockchain_citations.db 'CREATE TABLE citations(citing_doi, cited_doi)'

a3k --progress query crossref 'April 2024 Public Data File from Crossref' \
  --attach-databases bc:blockchain_citations.db \
  --partition \
  --query "
    INSERT INTO bc.citations(citing_doi, cited_doi)
      SELECT works.doi, work_references.doi
        FROM works
        INNER JOIN work_references ON work_references.work_id = works.id
        WHERE work_references.container_id = works.container_id
          AND work_references.doi IS NOT NULL
          AND work_references.article_title LIKE '%blockchain%';
"

Obtain Patent Office granted patents by type¶

a3k query uspto 'uspto-data' \
   --query 'SELECT type, Count(*) FROM us_patents GROUP BY type'

Sampling¶

The following command counts the number of publication that have or do not have an abstract in a deterministic sample of approximately 1% of the data set’s containers. It uses a tab character (\t) to separate the output fields. Through sampling the data containers it runs in a couple of minutes, rather than hours.

a3k query crossref 'April 2024 Public Data File from Crossref'  \
   --sample 'random.random() < 0.01' \
   --field-separator $'\t' \
   --query-file count-no-abstract.sql

where count-no-abstract.sql contains:

SELECT works.abstract is not null AS have_abstract, Count(*)
  FROM works GROUP BY have_abstract

For quick experiments, e.g. for verifying the queries of a full run, consider sampling just three containers with --sample 'random.random() < 0.0002'.

The deterministic way in which sampling is currently done means that each ‘random’ sample will produce the same results. This can be very useful in various scenarios, such as if you need replicable tests. If instead you need randomly different results each time you sample, you can re-seed the random number generator for each sample with --sample '( random.seed() ) or random.random() < 0.01' or similar.

For the USPTO dataset sampling is performed through a provided tuple argument named data. The tuple’s first value is a designator string that will be either “path” or “container”. Thus, sampling can be done either on compressed files represented through the weekly issued patents (path) or on the patents’ full text (container) located within the issued file. The tuple’s second value is a USPTO Zip file path or the patent’s text, respectively.

For sampling the compressed files

a3k query uspto 'uspto-data'  \
   --sample 'random.random() < 0.5 if data[0] == ""path"" else True' \
   --query "SELECT Count(*), relation FROM usp_related_documents GROUP BY relation"

Or for sampling unique patents

a3k query uspto 'uspto-data'  \
   --sample 'random.random() < 0.5 if data[0] == ""container"" else True' \
   --query "SELECT Count(*), relation FROM usp_related_documents GROUP BY relation"

Database of COVID research¶

The following command creates an SQLite database named covid.db with all Crossref data regarding publications that contain “COVID” in their title or abstract. The created database can be opened with SQLite.

a3k populate covid.db \
   crossref 'April 2024 Public Data File from Crossref' \
   --row-selection "title like '%COVID%' OR abstract like '%COVID%' "

Publications graph¶

The following command selects only a subset of columns of the complete Crossref data set to create a graph between navigable entities.

a3k populate graph.db \
   crossref 'April 2024 Public Data File from Crossref' \
   --columns works.id works.doi works.published_year \
     work_references.work_id work_references.doi work_references.isbn \
     work_funders.id work_funders.work_id work_funders.doi \
     funder_awards.funder_id funder_awards.name \
     author_affiliations.author_id author_affiliations.name \
     work_links.work_id work_subjects.work_id work_subjects.name \
     work_authors.id work_authors.work_id work_authors.orcid

Through this data set you can run on the database queries such as the following.

SELECT COUNT(*) FROM works;
SELECT COUNT(*) FROM (SELECT DISTINCT work_id FROM works_subjects);
SELECT COUNT(*) FROM (SELECT DISTINCT work_id FROM work_references);
SELECT COUNT(*) FROM affiliations_works;
SELECT COUNT(*) FROM (SELECT DISTINCT work_id FROM work_funders);

SELECT COUNT(*) FROM work_authors;
SELECT COUNT(*) FROM work_authors WHERE orcid is not null;
SELECT COUNT(*) FROM (SELECT DISTINCT orcid FROM work_authors);

SELECT COUNT(*) FROM authors_affiliations;
SELECT COUNT(*) FROM affiliation_names;

SELECT COUNT(*) FROM works_subjects;
SELECT COUNT(*) FROM subject_names;

SELECT COUNT(*) FROM work_funders;
SELECT COUNT(*) FROM funder_awards;

SELECT COUNT(*) FROM work_references;

Record selection from external database¶

The following command creates an SQLite database with all Crossref data of works whose DOI appears in the attached database named selected.db.

a3k populate selected-works.db \
   crossref 'April 2024 Public Data File from Crossref' \
   --attach-databases 'attached:selected.db' \
   --row-selection "EXISTS (SELECT 1 FROM attached.selected_dois WHERE works.doi = selected_dois.doi)"

Populate the database with author records from ORCID¶

Only records of authors identified in the Crossref publications through an ORCID will be added.

a3k populate database.db \
   ORCID ORCID_2022_10_summaries.tar.gz \
   --row-selection "EXISTS (SELECT 1 FROM populated.work_authors
     WHERE work_authors.orcid = persons.orcid)"

Populate the database with journal names¶

a3k populate database.db \
  journal-names http://ftp.crossref.org/titlelist/titleFile.csv

Populate the database with funder names¶

a3k populate database.db \
  funder-names https://doi.crossref.org/funderNames?mode=list

Work with Scopus All Science Journal Classification Codes (ASJC)¶

# Populate database with ASJCs
a3k populate database.db --data-source asjc

# Link the (sometime previously populated works table) with ASJCs
a3k process database.db link-works-asjcs

Populate the database with data regarding open access journals¶

a3k populate database.db doaj https://doaj.org/csv

Populate the database with the names of research organizations¶

Populate the research organization registry (ROR) tables.

# Fetch the ROR data file (~21 MB)
wget -O ror-v1.17.1.zip \
  "https://zenodo.org/record/7448410/files/v1.17.1-2022-12-16-ror-data.zip?download=1"

# Populate the database
a3k populate database.db ror ror-v1.17.1.zip

Link author affiliations with research organization names¶

Given a database already populated with work author affiliations and the research organization registry fill-in the table work_authors_rors linking the two.

# Link affiliations with best match
a3k process database.db link-aa-base-ror

# Link affiliations with top parent of best match
a3k process database.db link-aa-top-ror

After linking, the results’ quality can be verified with queries such as the following.

-- Display affiliation matches
SELECT author_affiliations.name, research_organizations.name FROM
  work_authors
  INNER JOIN author_affiliations
    ON work_authors.id = author_affiliations.author_id
  INNER JOIN work_authors_rors
    ON work_authors_rors.work_author_id = work_authors.id
  INNER JOIN research_organizations
    ON research_organizations.id = work_authors_rors.ror_id;

-- Display unmatched affiliations
SELECT author_affiliations.name FROM
  work_authors
  INNER JOIN author_affiliations
    ON work_authors.id = author_affiliations.author_id
  LEFT JOIN work_authors_rors
    ON work_authors_rors.work_author_id = work_authors.id
  WHERE work_authors_rors.ror_id is null;