/figshare/collections/search

POST /api/figshare/collections/search

Price: 20 credits

Search Figshare collections — the containers that group deposits belonging to one publication or project. Returns each collection's id, DOI, title and publication date.

How to use it

A collection row is deliberately thin — pass its `id` to /figshare/collections for the authors, description, categories and item count. Search /figshare/articles/search instead when you want the deposits themselves; a collection groups them and holds no files. Figshare reports no result total and will not serve past 10000 matches for any one query, so narrow with `published_since` or `source_doi` 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 the collection title, description and keywords. Leave it out to browse everything the other filters allow (examples: "cancer", "herbicide"; minLength: 1)
• doi string nullable — Return only the collection carrying this DOI, which for a publisher deposit is the accompanying publication's own DOI (examples: "10.1021/acs.jafc.6c06281"; minLength: 1)
• source_doi string nullable — Return only collections accompanying the publication carrying this DOI (examples: "10.1021/acs.analchem.6c03877"; minLength: 1)
• published_since string nullable — Keep only collections published on or after this date, as YYYY-MM-DD (examples: "2026-01-01"; minLength: 1)
• modified_since string nullable — Keep only collections whose metadata changed on or after this date, as YYYY-MM-DD (examples: "2026-01-01"; minLength: 1)
• group_id string nullable — Keep only collections owned by this Figshare group, as its numeric id (examples: "2505"; minLength: 1)
• institution_id string nullable — Keep only collections owned by this institution's Figshare portal, as its numeric id (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: "FigshareCollection")
• id string required
• url string required
• doi 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

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.