/dryad/datasets/search

POST /api/dryad/datasets/search

Price: 20 credits

Search Dryad datasets by free text, author affiliation, journal ISSN, member organisation and last change date. Every row is the complete dataset record — title, abstract, authors, funders, licence, keywords, related publication and usage counters — so no follow-up call is needed for the metadata.

How to use it

Prefer this over /dryad/datasets when you have a topic, an institution or a journal rather than a DOI: a row here carries the same fields the single-dataset endpoint returns, so there is nothing to hydrate. `affiliation_ror` wants the full https://ror.org/... address, not a bare ROR id or an institution name. Dryad ignores a filter value it cannot parse — a malformed `modified_since` silently returns unfiltered results — so check the dates on the rows you get back. There is no ordering control; results come newest change first. A query almost always matches far more datasets than one call returns, so narrow it with `journal_issn` or `affiliation_ror` rather than raising `count` and hoping to see them all.

Parameters

• access-token string required

Request body

• timeout integer — Max scrapping execution timeout (in seconds) (default: 300; min: 20; max: 1500)
• query string nullable — Free-text query matched against the title, abstract and keywords. Leave it out to browse the whole repository, newest change first (examples: "climate", "population genomics"; minLength: 1)
• affiliation_ror string nullable — Keep only datasets with an author affiliated to this organisation, as its full ROR address (examples: "https://ror.org/00hx57361"; minLength: 1)
• journal_issn string nullable — Keep only datasets whose related publication appeared in the journal with this ISSN (examples: "0962-1083"; minLength: 1)
• tenant string nullable — Keep only datasets submitted through this Dryad member organisation's portal, as its short tenant name (examples: "ucop"; minLength: 1)
• modified_since string nullable — Keep only datasets changed on or after this moment, as an ISO 8601 timestamp. Dryad ignores a value it cannot parse instead of reporting it (examples: "2026-01-01T00:00:00Z"; minLength: 1)
• count integer required — Max number of results (examples: 50; min: 1; max: 1000)

Response

• @type string (default: "DryadDataset")
• id string required
• url string required
• download_url string nullable
• abstract string nullable
• methods string nullable
• usage_notes string nullable
• human_subjects_statement string nullable
• publication_date string nullable
• last_modification_date string nullable
• license_url string nullable
• field_of_science string nullable
• curation_status string nullable
• version_status string nullable
• version_number integer nullable
• version_changes string nullable
• version_id string nullable
• visibility string nullable
• storage_size integer nullable
• related_publication_issn string nullable
• internal_id string nullable
• keywords array (default: [])
• locations array (default: [])
• authors array (default: [])
  • @type string (default: "DryadAuthor")
  • full_name string required
  • first_name string nullable
  • last_name string nullable
  • orcid string nullable
  • email string nullable
  • order integer nullable
  • affiliations array (default: [])
    • @type string (default: "DryadAffiliation")
    • name string required
    • ror_url string nullable
• funders array (default: [])
  • @type string (default: "DryadFunder")
  • name string nullable
  • identifier string nullable
  • identifier_type string nullable
  • award_number string nullable
  • award_title string nullable
  • award_description string nullable
  • award_url string nullable
  • order integer nullable
• related_works array (default: [])
  • @type string (default: "DryadRelatedWork")
  • identifier string required
  • identifier_type string nullable
  • relationship string nullable
• metrics object nullable
  • @type string (default: "DryadMetrics")
  • view_count integer nullable
  • download_count integer nullable
  • citation_count integer nullable

Errors

• 422 — The request body did not validate Check the fields against this schema. A URN with the wrong prefix is the most common cause.
• 408 — The request ran past its time limit Raise `timeout` in the request body, up to the maximum this endpoint documents. Lowering `count` or turning off the `with_*` flags also helps, because less work finishes sooner.
• 412 — The entity was not found, or a precondition failed Retrying will not help: either the entity does not exist, or the input points at a different one.
• 429 — Too many requests: a rate limit or a usage window is exhausted When the response carries an X-Retry-After header, wait that many seconds and retry: the same number is in the body as `detail.retry_after`, and the limit clears once that window passes. The message in the body names the limit that was hit.
• 500 — Something broke on our side Retrying will not help. If it keeps happening, send us the X-Request-ID from the response headers.
• 529 — Rate limit reached, or the endpoint is overloaded Wait at least 30 seconds, then retry.

Response headers

• X-Error — Error message text (present only on error)
• X-Request-ID — Unique request identifier
• X-Execution-Time — Execution time in seconds
• X-Result-Count — How many records the body carries. 0 means an empty result, which is a normal answer and not by itself an error. A non-zero count can come back together with X-Error when the failure happened partway through — read this header and X-Error independently.
• X-Total-Available-Results — How many records exist for this query, when the endpoint can say. On a `dry_run` request this is the answer and the body is empty. It saturates: the endpoint's documented maximum means 'at least that many', any smaller number is exact.
• X-Warning — Present when the request body carried keys this endpoint does not document. They were ignored, so any filter you meant to apply through them did not apply. Check the spelling against this schema and retry.
• X-Retry-After — Seconds to wait before retrying. Present only on 429.