Europe PMC (original) (raw)
Articles RESTful API
RESTful Web Service
Quick Start
For a quick start, click on the following link (opens in new window):
https://www.ebi.ac.uk/europepmc/webservices/rest/search?query=p53
Come back to this page for further guidance and help.
Web Service Overview
The Europe PMC RESTful Web Service gives you access to over 33 million publications from various sources, including PubMed, Agricola, the European Patents Office (EPO) and the National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE). Use the Web Service to access
- 10.2 million full text articles and 6.5 million open access articles
- Database cross-references to a number of databases, including UniProt, the European Nucleotide Archive (ENA) and more.
- Reference lists for more than 19.4 million publications.
- Citation counts and a citation network.
- Text-mined terms from full text articles, including accession numbers, chemicals, diseases, genes and proteins, Gene Ontology terms, and organisms. Use the Annotations API to access annotations in abstracts and full text articles, with links to related database records.
For background information on Europe PMC content refer to the Web Service Reference Guide (Sections 2 and 3) and What am I searching on Europe PMC?
The search module can be used to query search fields. Refer to the fields module, the search syntax reference or the Web Service Reference Guide for a list of available fields.
Output response formats can be XML or JSON. In the case of the 'search' module a Dublin Core format is also available.
Web Service Releases
Two versions of the RESTful web service are simultaneously available. This approach to release management allows users to prepare for a new version, rather than having to immediately respond to a version change. Join the Europe PMC web service users' Google group to receive notifications about web service releases.
Construct your URL for a fields request as follows for the production version:
GET https://www.ebi.ac.uk/europepmc/webservices/rest/fields
Construct your URL for a fields request as follows for the test version of the web service:
GET https://www.ebi.ac.uk/europepmc/webservices/test/rest/fields
See the latest release notes.
Sorting Results
By default, the Europe PMC RESTful search results are sorted by relevance, with the most relevant result being presented first in the list.
The search module additionally provides a sort parameter available for every single-valued field, e.g. P_PDATE_D, AUTH_FIRST, CITED. The sort parameter can be combined with'asc' or 'desc' sort order.
RESTful search results can be sorted in two other ways using the arguments: 'sort_date:y' and 'sort_cited:y' in the 'query' parameter of the search module. For example:
Sort by the number of citations, most cited being the first result presented:
https://www.ebi.ac.uk/europepmc/webservices/rest/search?query=malaria%20sort_cited:y
Sort by date of publication, the most recently published article being the first result given:
https://www.ebi.ac.uk/europepmc/webservices/rest/search?query=malaria%20sort_date:y
Result Types
There are three options for the result type parameter which determine the fields returned, as follows:
- idlist: returns a list of IDs and sources for the given search terms
- lite: returns key metadata for the given search terms (default result type)
- core: returns full metadata for a given publication ID; including abstract, full text links, and MeSH terms
Request Methods
Format
The format can either be XML, JSON or DC (Dublin Core); the default value is XML if the parameter is unspecified. XML returns the same response as the SOAP web service; see the Web Service Reference Guide.
DC returns the following Dublin Core metadata fields, within an RDF/XML wrapper: dc:contributor, dc:creator, dc:date, dc:description, dc:identifier, dc:language, dc:subject, dc:title, dc:type, dcterms:abstract, dcterms:accessRights, dcterms:bibliographicCitation, dcterms:isPartOf, dcterms:isVersionOf.
The use of these fields complies with the DCMI Metadata Terms recommendation documentation. Additionally, it should be noted that dc:contributor fields are used for the organisations to which some, or all of the authors listed in the dc:creator fields are affiliated. dc:description contains the publication types of the record (e.g. "Journal Article", "Book", etc.) dcterms:accessRights is only included for works in the Open Access subset of the PMC collection. There are two dcterms:bibliographicCitation fields for each journal article record, one which matches the "Text (citation)" option in the export feature on the Europe PMC web site, the other a machine-readable format using the syntax of the OpenURL standard. Other publication types (e.g. books, patents) only contain a single, non-machine-readable dcterms:bibliographicCitation.
Publication dates have been mapped as follows: dc:date - first publication date (the date of first publication, whichever is first, electronic or print publication; where a date is not fully available e.g. year only, an algorithm is applied to determine the value), dc:terms:available - electronic publication date, dc:terms:created - print publication date.
Note that the ‘resulttype’ parameter associated with the DC response is always set to ‘core’.
Example:
https://www.ebi.ac.uk/europepmc/webservices/rest/search?query=malaria&format=xml
https://www.ebi.ac.uk/europepmc/webservices/rest/search?query=malaria&format=json
https://www.ebi.ac.uk/europepmc/webservices/rest/search?query=malaria&format=dc
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