# /ieee/papers/search

`POST /api/ieee/papers/search`

Price: 10 credits

Search IEEE Xplore for conference papers, journal and magazine articles, books, standards, early access articles and courses, by free text and by content type, publisher, author, affiliation, publication title, conference location, topic, supplementary material, standard status and type, year range, open access and ordering. Each result carries the article number, title, abstract, authors with their IEEE author ids, the publication it appeared in, year, volume, issue, pages, DOI, citation and download counts and the links IEEE publishes for the record

## How to use it

IEEE Xplore serves at most 10,000 records for any one query however large the match count is, so a broad question is answered by narrowing it — a year range, a content type or a publication title — not by asking for more. `author`, `affiliation`, `publication_title`, `conference_location` and `publication_topic` must be IEEE's own spelling: take them from an earlier result, because a value IEEE does not use returns an empty result rather than an error. `abstract` here is the opening of the abstract; /ieee/papers returns the whole one. Leave `sort` unset for relevance.

## 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 across title, abstract and indexing terms. Accepts the IEEE Xplore query syntax: AND / OR / NOT between terms, a quoted phrase, a * wildcard, and a scoped field written as ("Document Title":term), ("Abstract":term), ("Authors":name), ("Index Terms":term), ("Publication Title":name) or ("DOI":value) (examples: "machine learning", "federated learning NOT survey", "(\"Document Title\":transformer)"; minLength: 1)
- `content_types` (array, nullable) — Restrict to one or more kinds of record; several values are combined as OR (one of: "Conferences", "Journals", "Magazines", "Books", "Early Access Articles", "Standards", "Courses"; examples: ["Conferences","Journals"])
- `publisher` (string, nullable) — Restrict to records issued by one publisher (one of: "IEEE", "IET", "OUP", "MIT Press", "Wiley", "VDE", "River Publishers", "AGU", "SAE", "IBM", "TUP", "Nokia Bell Labs", "SAIEE", "BIAI", "De Gruyter", "CIE", "KICS", "ZUP", "CSEE", "SGEPRI", "Packt Publishing", "URSI", "Additional Conference Content", "Artech", "IEICE", "Manning", "CMP", "PSPC", "CES", "PTP", "Princeton University Press", "CPSS", "Business Expert Press", "World Scientific", "Youke Publishing", "Ericsson", "FRPS", "SJTU", "Prometeus GmbH", "Southwest University", "IAPP")
- `author` (string, nullable) — Restrict to one author, spelled exactly as IEEE Xplore spells the name in a result's `authors[].name` (examples: "Wei Wang"; minLength: 1)
- `affiliation` (string, nullable) — Restrict to one author affiliation, spelled exactly as IEEE Xplore records it, including the city and country (examples: "Peng Cheng Laboratory, Shenzhen, China"; minLength: 1)
- `publication_title` (string, nullable) — Restrict to one journal, magazine, conference proceedings or book, spelled exactly as IEEE Xplore spells it in a result's `publication_title` (examples: "IEEE Access"; minLength: 1)
- `conference_location` (string, nullable) — Restrict to conferences held in one place, spelled as IEEE Xplore records it (examples: "Beijing, China"; minLength: 1)
- `publication_topic` (string, nullable) — Restrict to one IEEE topic label, spelled as it appears in a paper's `topics` (examples: "Deep Learning"; minLength: 1)
- `supplemental_item` (string, nullable) — Restrict to records that ship the named kind of supplementary material (one of: "Media", "Datasets", "Video", "Code", "Immersive Articles")
- `standard_status` (string, nullable) — Restrict standards by their status. Only standards carry one (one of: "Active", "Inactive", "Superseded")
- `standard_type` (string, nullable) — Restrict standards by the kind of document. Only standards carry one (one of: "Standard Docs", "Whitepapers", "Research Documents", "Test Specifications")
- `year_from` (integer, nullable) — Earliest publication year to include (examples: 2020; min: 1872)
- `year_to` (integer, nullable) — Latest publication year to include (examples: 2024; min: 1872)
- `open_access` (boolean, nullable) — Set true to keep only records whose full text IEEE Xplore serves without a subscription. IEEE Xplore has no switch for the opposite set, so false and unset both leave the results unfiltered
- `exclude_ephemera` (boolean, nullable) — Set true to drop ephemeral items — front matter, announcements and similar non-article content. IEEE Xplore has no switch for the opposite set, so false and unset both leave the results unfiltered
- `sort` (string, nullable) — Result ordering. Left unset, IEEE Xplore orders by its own relevance score (one of: "newest", "oldest", "paper-citations", "patent-citations", "most-popular", "pub-title-asc", "pub-title-desc")
- `count` (integer, required) — Number of records to return (examples: 100; min: 1; max: 10000)

## Response

### 200 — Successful Response

- `@type` (string) (default: "IeeePaperHit")
- `id` (string, required)
- `url` (string, required)
- `abstract` (string, nullable)
- `doi` (string, nullable)
- `content_type` (string, nullable)
- `content_type_display` (string, nullable)
- `collection` (string, nullable)
- `publisher` (string, nullable)
- `publication_title` (string, nullable)
- `publication_number` (string, nullable)
- `publication_url` (string, nullable)
- `publication_year` (integer, nullable)
- `publication_date` (string, nullable)
- `issue_number` (string, nullable)
- `volume` (string, nullable)
- `issue` (string, nullable)
- `start_page` (string, nullable)
- `end_page` (string, nullable)
- `authors` (array) (default: [])
  - `@type` (string) (default: "IeeeHitAuthor")
  - `id` (string, nullable)
  - `name` (string, nullable)
  - `normalized_name` (string, nullable)
  - `first_name` (string, nullable)
  - `last_name` (string, nullable)
- `major_topic` (string, nullable)
- `citation_count` (integer, nullable)
- `patent_citation_count` (integer, nullable)
- `download_count` (integer, nullable)
- `access_type` (string, nullable)
- `access_message` (string, nullable)
- `is_early_access` (boolean, nullable)
- `is_online_only` (boolean, nullable)
- `is_ephemera` (boolean, nullable)
- `is_latest_standard` (boolean, nullable)
- `has_standard_versions` (boolean, nullable)
- `pdf_url` (string, nullable)
- `pdf_size_kb` (integer, nullable)
- `book_pdf_url` (string, nullable)
- `citations_url` (string, nullable)
- `patent_citations_url` (string, nullable)
- `multimedia_url` (string, nullable)
- `rights_url` (string, nullable)
- `image` (string, nullable)
- `graphical_abstract` (object, nullable)
  - `@type` (string) (default: "IeeeGraphicalAbstract")
  - `summary` (string, nullable)
  - `image` (string, nullable)
  - `file_size` (string, nullable)
- `supplements` (array) (default: [])
  - `@type` (string) (default: "IeeeSupplementGroup")
  - `kind` (string, nullable)
  - `repository` (string, nullable)
  - `badge` (string, nullable)
  - `badge_message` (string, nullable)
  - `files` (array) (default: [])
    - `@type` (string) (default: "IeeeSupplementItem")
    - `name` (string, nullable)
    - `doi` (string, nullable)
    - `url` (string, nullable)
    - `widget_url` (string, nullable)
    - `language` (string, nullable)
    - `badge_type` (string, nullable)

## Errors

### 422 — Validation Error

The request body did not validate

What to do: Check the fields against this schema. A URN with the wrong prefix is the most common cause.

- `detail` (array)
  - `loc` (array, required)
  - `msg` (string, required)
  - `type` (string, required)
  - `input` (any)
  - `ctx` (object)

### 408

The request ran past its time limit

What to do: 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

What to do: 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

What to do: 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

What to do: 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

What to do: Wait at least 30 seconds, then retry.

## Response envelope

Success: Array of objects (may be empty if no results)

Error: Error may coexist with partial results if it occurs mid-execution. Check X-Error header and status code.

Every response carries these 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.