Hi I’m Casey. I am excited to announce that I am now full time with OurResearch as a software engineer working on OpenAlex and Unpaywall!

My Journey

I freelanced for OurResearch prior to joining full time this summer. With Jason and Heather’s help I maintained Paperbuzz, Cite-As, and also built out a project to catalog academic journal pricing. With freelancing I was able to improve my python and data management skills in order to tackle bigger projects.

Prior to freelancing I enjoyed a career in the US Air Force, which I am proud of. I’m fortunate to have hundreds of hours as aircrew on multiple aircraft, as well as a variety of technical and leadership assignments. So if you ever want to talk airplanes be ready because I might talk your ear off!

My academic experience comes from my time in university pursuing advanced education.

My Vision with OurResearch

In December I helped build the API and set up Elasticsearch for a project called OpenAlex. That project has continued to grow and I love to see how many people are using it. My core job with OpenAlex is to provide front-line customer support, as well as maintain and improve the API and search infrastructure. I’m also working on several parts of UnPaywall.

It’s incredible that OurResearch tools are freely open and available. I find OurResearch has similar core values as my time in the Air Force: small teams empowered to make decisions, humble and accepting of feedback in order to make things better. That’s why we believe our community of users are invaluable and important in keeping those tools free, open, and easy to use.

So we will listen to your feedback, fix bugs and implement features quickly, and continue to maintain our documentation so the dataset and APIs are as frictionless as they can be. We welcome and need your help with this mission! So do not hesitate to contact me or the team.

I look forward to improving OpenAlex and Unpaywall, and to meeting those of you using OurResearch products!

– Casey