scientific-skills/paper-lookup/references/crossref.md
Crossref is the DOI registration agency for scholarly content. It provides metadata for 150M+ works including journal articles, books, conference papers, datasets, and preprints.
https://api.crossref.org
None required. Add [email protected] to get into the polite pool (2x faster rate limits).
| Pool | Rate | Concurrency |
|---|---|---|
| Public (no mailto) | 5 req/sec | 1 concurrent |
| Polite (with mailto) | 10 req/sec | 3 concurrent |
HTTP 429 = temporarily blocked.
GET /works?query={text}&rows={n}&[email protected]
| Parameter | Default | Description |
|---|---|---|
query | -- | Free-text search across all fields |
query.author | -- | Search author names |
query.bibliographic | -- | Search titles, authors, ISSNs, years |
query.affiliation | -- | Search affiliations |
query.container-title | -- | Search journal names |
filter | -- | Comma-separated name:value pairs |
sort | score | score, published, issued, deposited, updated, is-referenced-by-count, references-count |
order | desc | asc or desc |
rows | 20 | Results per page (max 1000) |
offset | 0 | Skip N results (max 10,000) |
cursor | -- | Use * for cursor-based deep pagination |
select | -- | Comma-separated field names to return |
facet | -- | Facet counts, e.g. type-name:10 |
sample | -- | Return N random items (max 100) |
Example:
https://api.crossref.org/works?query=CRISPR+gene+therapy&filter=from-pub-date:2024-01-01,type:journal-article,has-abstract:true&rows=5&sort=published&order=desc&[email protected]
GET /works/{doi}[email protected]
URL-encode the DOI: 10.1038/nature12373 becomes 10.1038%2Fnature12373
Example:
https://api.crossref.org/works/10.1038%[email protected]
GET /journals?query={name}&rows={n}
GET /journals/{issn}
GET /journals/{issn}/works?query={text}&rows={n}
GET /funders?query={name}
GET /funders/{id}
GET /funders/{id}/works?rows={n}
Funder IDs are from the Funder Registry (e.g., 100000001 for NSF).
GET /members?query={name}
GET /members/{id}/works?rows={n}
YYYY, YYYY-MM, YYYY-MM-DD)| Filter | Description |
|---|---|
from-pub-date / until-pub-date | Publication date |
from-print-pub-date / until-print-pub-date | Print publication date |
from-online-pub-date / until-online-pub-date | Online publication date |
from-posted-date / until-posted-date | Posted date (preprints) |
| Filter | Description |
|---|---|
has-abstract | Has an abstract |
has-orcid | Has ORCID IDs |
has-funder | Has funder info |
has-full-text | Has full-text links |
has-references | Has reference list |
has-license | Has license info |
| Filter | Description |
|---|---|
type | journal-article, posted-content, book-chapter, proceedings-article, etc. |
issn | Journal ISSN |
doi | Specific DOI |
orcid | Contributor ORCID |
funder | Funder Registry ID |
member | Crossref member ID |
prefix | DOI prefix |
license.url | License URL |
update-type | correction, retraction |
Syntax: filter=name1:value1,name2:value2
/works?query=cancer&rows=100&offset=200
?cursor=*&rows=100next-cursor?cursor={next-cursor-value}&rows=100{
"status": "ok",
"message-type": "work-list",
"message": {
"total-results": 2779116,
"items-per-page": 20,
"next-cursor": "...",
"items": [...]
}
}
{
"DOI": "10.1038/nature12373",
"title": ["Nanometre-scale thermometry in a living cell"],
"author": [{"given": "G.", "family": "Kucsko", "sequence": "first"}],
"publisher": "Springer Science and Business Media LLC",
"type": "journal-article",
"published": {"date-parts": [[2013, 7, 31]]},
"container-title": ["Nature"],
"ISSN": ["0028-0836", "1476-4687"],
"volume": "500",
"issue": "7460",
"page": "54-58",
"is-referenced-by-count": 1745,
"references-count": 30,
"abstract": "<p>Abstract text with HTML tags...</p>",
"license": [{"URL": "...", "content-version": "vor"}],
"link": [{"URL": "...", "content-type": "application/pdf"}],
"reference": [{"key": "...", "doi-asserted-by": "crossref", "DOI": "..."}],
"subject": ["Multidisciplinary"],
"language": "en"
}
Note: title and container-title are arrays. published.date-parts is [[year, month, day]]. Abstract may contain HTML tags.