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Important

All Microsoft Academic Services have been officially retired as of December 31st, 2021. We are currently retaining original documentation as-is for educational use, however all information about signing up for services is no longer valid, and support and service (API) links will not function.


Get Microsoft Academic Graph on Azure storage

Details step-by-step instructions for setting up one-time or automatic provisioning of Microsoft Academic Data (MAKES/MAG) to an Azure blob storage account.

Open Data License: ODC-BY

When using Microsoft Academic Data (MAG, MAKES, etc.) in a product or service, or including data in a redistribution, please acknowledge Microsoft Academic using the URI https://aka.ms/msracad. For publications and reports, please cite following articles:

Important

  • Arnab Sinha, Zhihong Shen, Yang Song, Hao Ma, Darrin Eide, Bo-June (Paul) Hsu, and Kuansan Wang. 2015. An Overview of Microsoft Academic Service (MA) and Applications. In Proceedings of the 24th International Conference on World Wide Web (WWW '15 Companion). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 243-246. DOI=http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2740908.2742839

  • K. Wang et al., "A Review of Microsoft Academic Services for Science of Science Studies", Frontiers in Big Data, 2019, doi: 10.3389/fdata.2019.00045

Note

Microsoft Academic Data is currently in a free preview period, so there are no charges associated with the provisioning or use of the data/service itself. However Azure requires you to cover all costs associated with standard resource creation, usage, etc. For cost estimates associated with Microsoft Academic Data, please see the Pricing page.

Most research institutions have an "Enterprise Account" with Microsoft including Azure subscription. The pricing for Enterprise Accounts differ from the individual account shown in Azure's price calculator.

If you have an Enterprise Account, please check with your individual institution's Information Technology/Computer Center resource on the process of setting up Azure to get MAG. You might need to obtain a "Master Agreement #" and involve MLSP (Microsoft Licensed Solution Provider) for help.

Setup data share and storage account to receive Microsoft Academic Data releases

Create an Azure Subscription

Please create a new Azure subscription for the distribution previews. If your organization already using Azure, this could be a separate subscription under the same tenant id. If you start from scratch, for example "create Azure free account", the subscription will be created under a new tenant id.

Sign in to the Azure portal

Sign in to the Azure portal.

Create an Azure Data Share Service

  1. Home > Create a resource > Data Share > Create.

    Create new Azure Data Share service

  2. Provide following values to create a Data Share service. Then select Review + create.

    Property Description
    Subscription From the drop-down, select your Azure subscription.
    Resource group Specify whether you want to create a new resource group or use an existing one. A resource group is a container that holds related resources within an Azure subscription. For more information, see Azure Resource Group overview.
    Location Select one of the locations below. Reference Azure network round-trip latency statistics to choose an Azure region which is most appropriate for your application.
    - East Asia
    - East US
    - UK South
    - West Europe
    - West US

    DO NOT select East US 2 or West US 2.
    Name Provide a name for your Data Share service.

    Create new Azure Data Share service Basics

  3. Verify that the information you entered is correct and select Create.

    Submit new Data Share service for creation

Create an Azure Storage Account

  1. Home > Create a resource > Storage > Storage account > Create

    Create new storage account resource

  2. Provide following values to create an Azure Storage account. Then select Review + create.

    Property Description
    Subscription From the drop-down, select your Azure subscription.
    Resource group Specify whether you want to create a new resource group or use an existing one. A resource group is a container that holds related resources for an Azure solution. For more information, see Azure Resource Group overview. You can use the same resource group as the Data Share service.
    Storage account name Provide a name for your storage account (mag<org_name>), e.g. magconsoto. You don't need to use your organization name after the "mag", however the account name must be unique among all Azure Storage accounts.
    Location Select one of the locations below, same as the Data Share service. Reference Azure network round-trip latency statistics to choose an Azure region which is most appropriate for your application.
    - East Asia
    - East US
    - UK South
    - West Europe
    - West US

    DO NOT select East US 2 or West US 2.
    Performance Standard
    Account kind StorageV2 (general purpose v2)
    Replication Select the desired replication mode

    Enter details for new storage account resource

  3. Verify that the information you entered is correct and select Create.

    Submit new storage account resource for creation

Note Azure storage account name

  1. Once notified that the storage account has been created, click "Go to resource"

    Navigate to the new storage account resource

  2. Go to "access keys" and take note of the "storage account name"

    Save new storage account resource name and access keys for later

Create a Blob Container

  1. Follow the instructions in Create a container to create a blob container.

  2. Name the blob container (i.e. ma-datashare).

Make sure that you have these items of information

✔️ The email address you used to log on to Azure portal.

✔️ The location of your Azure Storage (AS) account (i.e. East US).

✔️ The name of your Azure Storage (AS) account (i.e. magconsoto).

✔️ The name of your Azure Storage blob container (i.e. ma-datashare). This infomation is needed in Accept and receive data using Azure Data Share.

Sign up for Microsoft Academic Data provisioning

To sign up for Microsoft Academic Data on AS distribution preview, send the following information using your school or company email account to academicapi@microsoft.com with the subject "Access request to Microsoft Academic Data on Azure Storage (AS) distribution preview":

  • Are you affiliated with a company or university?
    • If company, please provide the company's name, your department/group and your role
    • If university, please provide the university's name, department, group/advisor, and your role (undergraduate student, grad student, professor, etc.)
  • Brief description of the project you will be using Microsoft Academic Data for
  • Name of your Microsoft sales representative, if you have one
  • The email address you used to log on to Azure portal
  • The location of your Azure Storage (AS) account
  • The name of your Azure Storage (AS) account

Receiving MAG Datasets

After reviewing the application, Microsoft Academic will send an invitation through Azure Data Share for receiving MAG datasets. Follow the instructions in Receive data using Azure Data Share to complete the set up.

Next steps

Advance to next sections to learn about entity data schema and using Azure Data Lake Analytics or Databricks for Microsoft Academic Graph.

Receive data using Azure Data Share

Microsoft Academic Graph data schema

Set up Azure Data Lake Analytics for Microsoft Academic Graph

Set up Azure Databricks for Microsoft Academic Graph

Resources