/figshare/articles/search

POST /api/figshare/articles/search

Price: 20 credits

Search Figshare research outputs by full text, DOI, publication DOI, item type, publication or modification date, group and institution. Returns each record's id, DOI, title, item type, the dates it was created, published and last modified, its thumbnail, and the DOI and title of the publication it supplements.

How to use it

Use this to find Figshare records and then pass each `id` to /figshare/articles for the authors, description, licence and files — a search row carries none of those. `query` is the only text matching there is; a misspelt or unsupported filter is ignored by Figshare rather than rejected, so this endpoint sends only the filters listed above. Passing `doi` is the way to resolve a publisher DOI to a Figshare record. Figshare reports no result total and will not serve past 10000 matches for any one query, so narrow with `published_since` or `item_type` rather than expecting to reach the end of a broad query.

Parameters

• access-token string required

Request body

• timeout integer — Max scrapping execution timeout (in seconds) (default: 300; min: 20; max: 1500)
• query string nullable — Full-text query matched against title, description, authors and keywords. Leave it out to browse everything the other filters allow (examples: "cancer genomics", "sea level rise"; minLength: 1)
• doi string nullable — Return only the record carrying this DOI, whether Figshare minted it or a publisher did (examples: "10.6084/m9.figshare.32974826", "10.1186/1471-2288-13-46"; minLength: 1)
• source_doi string nullable — Return only records deposited as supplementary material of the publication carrying this DOI (examples: "10.3389/fonc.2026.1908708"; minLength: 1)
• item_type string nullable — Keep only records of this kind (one of: "figure", "media", "dataset", "poster", "journal_contribution", "presentation", "thesis", "software", "online_resource", "preprint", "book", "conference_contribution")
• published_since string nullable — Keep only records published on or after this date, as YYYY-MM-DD (examples: "2026-01-01"; minLength: 1)
• modified_since string nullable — Keep only records whose metadata changed on or after this date, as YYYY-MM-DD (examples: "2026-01-01"; minLength: 1)
• group_id string nullable — Keep only records deposited into this Figshare group, as its numeric id. A record returned by this endpoint carries the id of its own group (examples: "61179"; minLength: 1)
• institution_id string nullable — Keep only records deposited into this institution's Figshare portal, as its numeric id. Figshare publishes no route that lists the ids (examples: "63"; minLength: 1)
• sort string — Field the results are ordered by (default: "published_date"; one of: "published_date", "modified_date", "created_date", "views", "downloads", "shares", "cites")
• sort_direction string — Ordering direction (default: "desc"; one of: "desc", "asc")
• count integer required — Max number of results (examples: 100; min: 1; max: 10000)

Response

• @type string (default: "FigshareArticle")
• id string required
• url string required
• doi string nullable
• handle string nullable
• item_type string nullable
• item_type_id string nullable
• created_at string nullable
• modified_at string nullable
• published_at string nullable
• timeline object nullable
  • @type string (default: "FigshareTimeline")
  • posted_at string nullable
  • submitted_at string nullable
  • revised_at string nullable
  • first_online_date string nullable
  • publisher_publication_date string nullable
  • publisher_acceptance_date string nullable
• thumbnail string nullable
• group_id string nullable
• project_id string nullable
• source_doi string nullable
• source_title string 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.