Snowballer

Snowballer tool automates snowball literature searches

Reference documentation

• OpenAlex works filters
• Paging
• Search works

Algorithm

1. Get work entity ID(s)
   1. Hard-code in control.R?
   2. Load from an external file?
   3. Search?
2. Determine the desired number of degrees of separation from seed articles
   1. Create infrastructure for looping next top-level step at different degrees of separation
3. For each entity ID
   1. Get works cited by the entity (cited_by filter)
      1. Short query to get the number of works (see meta > count field)
      2. Loop to get all works
   2. Get works that cite the entity (cites filter) -- repeat steps under parallel entry above
4. Deduplicate works
   1. Load results
   2. Merge results
   3. Keep unique entries (where row !duplicated())

Sample calls

• Seed article: https://openalex.org/W3125944002
• Title search: https://api.openalex.org/works?filter=title.search:Does-the-stock-market-fully-value-intangibles
• Cited by: https://api.openalex.org/works?filter=cited_by:W3125944002
• Cites: https://api.openalex.org/works?filter=cites:W3125944002