/retractionwatch/notices/search

POST /api/retractionwatch/notices/search

Price: 10 credits

Search the Retraction Watch database of retraction, correction, expression-of-concern and reinstatement notices by title, author, journal, publisher, institution, country, subject, reason, article type, identifier or date range

How to use it

Search here when you want the stated reason a paper was retracted, or a cohort of notices — Crossref carries whether and when, this carries why. The source serves at most 50 records per query and there is no way to ask it for the ones after those, and those 50 are the most recent notices rather than a sample, so a full 50 rows means older matches you cannot reach: narrow with a second criterion (`journal`, `publisher`, `country`, `reason`) rather than with date ranges alone, since one notice date can hold several hundred records. Rows come back newest notice first, with a paper's earlier notices directly below its newest one. Text fields are substring matches and accept AND / OR between terms. `nature` separates a real retraction from a correction, an expression of concern or a reinstatement — filter on it rather than assuming, and reinstatements exist only here, never in Crossref.

Parameters

• access-token string required

Request body

• timeout integer — Max scrapping execution timeout (in seconds) (default: 300; min: 20; max: 1500)
• paper_title string nullable — Words in the retracted paper title (minLength: 1)
• author string nullable — Author name of the retracted paper (minLength: 1)
• journal string nullable — Journal the retracted paper appeared in (minLength: 1)
• publisher string nullable — Publisher of the journal (minLength: 1)
• institution string nullable — Author affiliation named on the paper (minLength: 1)
• country string nullable — Country of an author affiliation (minLength: 1)
• subject string nullable — Subject area, as Retraction Watch labels it (minLength: 1)
• reason string nullable — Reason given for the notice, e.g. Plagiarism (minLength: 1)
• article_type string nullable — Article type, e.g. Review Article (minLength: 1)
• notes string nullable — Words in the free-text note on the record (minLength: 1)
• url string nullable — Words in a URL linked from the record (minLength: 1)
• curator_notes string nullable — Words in the curators' internal note on the record; the note itself is not returned (minLength: 1)
• nature string nullable — Kind of notice (one of: "Retraction", "Expression of concern", "Correction", "Reinstatement")
• paywalled string nullable — Whether the notice itself is behind a paywall (one of: "yes", "no", "unknown")
• original_paper_doi string nullable — DOI of the retracted paper (minLength: 1)
• original_paper_pubmed_id string nullable — PubMed ID of the retracted paper (minLength: 1)
• retraction_doi string nullable — DOI of the notice (minLength: 1)
• retraction_pubmed_id string nullable — PubMed ID of the notice (minLength: 1)
• original_paper_date_from string nullable — Earliest publication date of the retracted paper (YYYY-MM-DD)
• original_paper_date_to string nullable — Latest publication date of the retracted paper (YYYY-MM-DD)
• retraction_date_from string nullable — Earliest notice date (YYYY-MM-DD)
• retraction_date_to string nullable — Latest notice date (YYYY-MM-DD)
• record_created_from string nullable — Earliest date the record entered the database (YYYY-MM-DD)
• record_created_to string nullable — Latest date the record entered the database (YYYY-MM-DD)
• count integer required — Number of notices to return (min: 1; max: 50)

Response

• @type string (default: "RetractionwatchNotice")
• record_id string required
• subjects array (default: [])
• journal string nullable
• publisher string nullable
• institutions array (default: [])
• authors array (default: [])
• countries array (default: [])
• article_types array (default: [])
• nature string nullable
• reasons array (default: [])
• original_paper_date string nullable
• original_paper_doi string nullable
• original_paper_pubmed_id string nullable
• retraction_date string nullable
• retraction_doi string nullable
• retraction_pubmed_id string nullable
• is_paywalled boolean nullable
• notes string nullable
• urls array (default: [])

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.