Use overview

After downloading the Crossref data you can use alexandria3k through its Python API or as a command-line tool.

With alexandria3k you can process diverse sources of bibliographic data, such as Crossref, ORCID, USPTO, DOAJ, and ROR. Specifically, you can perform the following actions.

• Directly run ad hoc SQL queries on any of the supported data sets.

• Populate SQLite databases with selected elements of the supported data sets.

  • Select a horizontal subset of a data set’s records.

    • Through an SQL expression.

    • By sampling a subset of the data set’s elements or containers. (For example sampling some of the 26 thousand containers in the Crossref data set.)

  • Select a horizontal subset of a data set’s records by only loading those associated with already populated records or records available in another database.

  • Select a vertical subset of a data set’s columns

    • Using the Table.Column or Table.* notation

• Process already populated databases to cross-link or normalize their elements.

Populating a database can take minutes (for a small, e.g. experimental, subset), a few hours (to traverse the whole Crossref data set and obtain a few thousands of records), or a couple of days (to produce a large set, e.g. by selecting some columns).

After your populate an SQLite database and create suitable indexes, SQL queries often run in seconds.

You can find many complete proof-of-concept example studies conducted with command-line invocations in the examples directory. Consider using the hello world (work authors by decade) example as a starting point.