Summary and Schedule

Learning Objectives

After attending this training, participants will be able to:

Setup Instructions

Download files required for the lesson

00h 00m

1. APIs & OpenAlex

What is an API?
What is OpenAlex?
Why do organisations create APIs?

00h 17m

2. The OpenAlex API

01h 04m

Finish

The actual schedule may vary slightly depending on the topics and exercises chosen by the instructor.

Installing Python Using Anaconda

Python is a popular language for research computing, and great for general-purpose programming as well. Installing all of its research packages individually can be a bit difficult, so we recommend Anaconda, an all-in-one installer.

Regardless of how you choose to install it, please make sure you install Python 3.6 or above. The latest 3.x version recommended on Python.org is fine.

We will teach Python using JupyterLab, a programming environment that runs in a web browser (JupyterLab will be installed by Anaconda). For this to work you will need a reasonably up-to-date browser. The current versions of the Chrome, Safari and Firefox browsers are all supported (some older browsers, including Internet Explorer version 9 and below, are not).

Watch a video tutorial for Windows.

Open anaconda.com/download with your web browser.
Download the Anaconda for Windows installer with Python 3. (If you are not sure which version to choose, you probably want the 64-bit Graphical Installer Anaconda3-…-Windows-x86_64.exe)
Install Python 3 by running the Anaconda Installer, using all of the defaults for installation except make sure to check Add Anaconda to my PATH environment variable.

Watch a video tutorial for Mac.

Open anaconda.com/download with your web browser.
Download the Anaconda Installer with Python 3 for macOS (you can either use the Graphical or the Command Line Installer).
Install Python 3 by running the Anaconda Installer using all of the defaults for installation.

Note that the following installation steps require you to work from the shell. If you aren’t comfortable doing the installation yourself stop here and request help from the workshop organizers.

Open anaconda.com/download with your web browser.
Download the Anaconda Installer with Python 3 for Linux.
Open a terminal window and navigate to the directory where the executable is downloaded (e.g., cd ~/Downloads).
Type bash Anaconda3 and press Tab to auto-complete the full file name. The name of file you just downloaded should appear.
Press Enter (or Return depending on your keyboard). You will follow the text-only prompts. To move through the text, press Spacebar. Type yes and press Enter to approve the license. Press Enter (or Return) to approve the default location for the files. Type yes and press Enter (or Return) to prepend Anaconda to your PATH (this makes the Anaconda distribution the default Python).
Close the terminal window.

JupyterLab

We will teach Python using JupyterLab, a part of a family of Jupyter tools that includes Jupyter Notebook and JupyterLab, both of which provide interactive web environments where you can write and run Python code. If you installed Anaconda, JupyterLab is installed on your system. If you did not install Anaconda, you can install JupyterLab on its own using conda, pip, or other popular package managers.