/osf/nodes/search

POST /api/osf/nodes/search

Price: 20 credits

Search public OSF projects by title, description, tag, subject, category, parent project, contributor, preprint attachment and creation or modification date. Returns each project's GUID, title, description, category, subjects, tags, licence record and dates.

How to use it

`title_contains` and `description` match a substring, `tag` and `subject` match a whole term, so a partial tag returns nothing rather than a near miss. OSF rejects a filter it does not recognise with a 422 from this endpoint rather than ignoring it, but it accepts an unknown `sort` silently and serves the default order, so trust `sort` only with the values offered here. Rows carry no authors — take a GUID to /osf/nodes for the contributor list and the DOI, and feed a contributor's GUID back as `contributor_id` to gather everything that researcher works on. Anonymous listing covers public projects only. Combine filters rather than walking a broad query: an unfiltered listing spans hundreds of thousands of projects, and a project carries no ranking you could use to pick among them.

Parameters

• access-token string required

Request body

• timeout integer — Max scrapping execution timeout (in seconds) (default: 300; min: 20; max: 1500)
• title_contains string nullable — Keep only projects whose title contains this text (examples: "climate"; minLength: 1)
• description string nullable — Keep only projects whose description contains this text (examples: "replication"; minLength: 1)
• tag string nullable — Keep only projects carrying this tag, matched exactly (examples: "covid"; minLength: 1)
• subject string nullable — Keep only projects filed under this subject taxonomy term (examples: "Psychology"; minLength: 1)
• category string nullable — Keep only projects of this category (one of: "project", "analysis", "communication", "data", "hypothesis", "instrumentation", "methods and measures", "procedure", "software", "other")
• parent_id string nullable — Keep only the direct children of this project GUID (examples: "jsd4k"; minLength: 1)
• contributor_id string nullable — Keep only projects this OSF user GUID is a contributor on (examples: "pr4by"; minLength: 1)
• has_preprint boolean nullable — Keep only projects that do, or do not, have a preprint attached
• created_since string nullable — Keep only projects created on or after this date, as YYYY-MM-DD (examples: "2026-01-01"; minLength: 1)
• modified_since string nullable — Keep only projects changed on or after this date, as YYYY-MM-DD (examples: "2026-01-01"; minLength: 1)
• sort string — Field the results are ordered by (default: "date_modified"; one of: "date_created", "date_modified", "title")
• sort_direction string — Ordering direction (default: "desc"; one of: "desc", "asc")
• count integer required — Max number of results (examples: 100; min: 1; max: 500)

Response

• @type string (default: "OsfNode")
• id string required
• url string required
• description string nullable
• category string nullable
• created_at string nullable
• modified_at string nullable
• tags array (default: [])
• subjects array (default: [])
  • @type string (default: "OsfSubject")
  • id string required
  • text string required
  • path array (default: [])
• custom_citation string nullable
• license_record object nullable
  • @type string (default: "OsfLicenseRecord")
  • year string nullable
  • copyright_holders array (default: [])
• is_public boolean nullable
• is_fork boolean nullable
• is_collection boolean nullable
• is_preprint boolean nullable
• is_registration boolean nullable
• is_wiki_enabled boolean nullable
• are_access_requests_enabled boolean 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.