/unpaywall/works

POST /api/unpaywall/works

Price: 1 credit

Get open-access status and full-text locations for a scholarly work by its DOI

How to use it

Get the open-access (OA) status and full-text locations of a scholarly work by its DOI. Returns the title, genre, publisher, publication date and year, whether the work is open access and its OA color status (gold, green, hybrid, bronze, or closed), the journal it appeared in (name, ISSN-L, ISSNs, whether the journal is fully OA and listed in DOAJ), and the catalog of open-access copies — the best and first OA location plus all known and embargoed locations, each with its PDF and landing-page URLs, license, version (submitted/published), host type (publisher or repository), hosting repository, and OA date. Also returns the authors with their position, corresponding-author flag, and raw affiliations.

Parameters

• access-token string required

Request body

• timeout integer — Max scrapping execution timeout (in seconds) (default: 300; min: 20; max: 1500)
• doi string required — Work DOI (examples: "10.1038/nature12373", "10.1371/journal.pone.0000308"; minLength: 1)

Response

• @type string (default: "UnpaywallWork")
• doi string required
• doi_url string nullable
• genre string nullable
• data_standard integer nullable
• is_oa boolean nullable
• oa_status string nullable
• is_paratext boolean nullable
• has_repository_copy boolean nullable
• published_date string nullable
• year integer nullable
• updated_at string nullable
• publisher string nullable
• journal object nullable
  • @type string (default: "UnpaywallJournal")
  • name string nullable
  • issn_l string nullable
  • issns array (default: [])
  • is_oa boolean nullable
  • is_in_doaj boolean nullable
• best_oa_location object nullable
  • @type string (default: "UnpaywallOaLocation")
  • url string nullable
  • url_for_pdf string nullable
  • url_for_landing_page string nullable
  • license string nullable
  • version string nullable
  • host_type string nullable
  • is_best boolean nullable
  • oa_date string nullable
  • repository_institution string nullable
  • evidence string nullable
  • endpoint_id string nullable
  • pmh_id string nullable
• first_oa_location object nullable
  • @type string (default: "UnpaywallOaLocation")
  • url string nullable
  • url_for_pdf string nullable
  • url_for_landing_page string nullable
  • license string nullable
  • version string nullable
  • host_type string nullable
  • is_best boolean nullable
  • oa_date string nullable
  • repository_institution string nullable
  • evidence string nullable
  • endpoint_id string nullable
  • pmh_id string nullable
• oa_locations array (default: [])
  • @type string (default: "UnpaywallOaLocation")
  • url string nullable
  • url_for_pdf string nullable
  • url_for_landing_page string nullable
  • license string nullable
  • version string nullable
  • host_type string nullable
  • is_best boolean nullable
  • oa_date string nullable
  • repository_institution string nullable
  • evidence string nullable
  • endpoint_id string nullable
  • pmh_id string nullable
• oa_locations_embargoed array (default: [])
  • @type string (default: "UnpaywallOaLocation")
  • url string nullable
  • url_for_pdf string nullable
  • url_for_landing_page string nullable
  • license string nullable
  • version string nullable
  • host_type string nullable
  • is_best boolean nullable
  • oa_date string nullable
  • repository_institution string nullable
  • evidence string nullable
  • endpoint_id string nullable
  • pmh_id string nullable
• authors array (default: [])
  • @type string (default: "UnpaywallAuthor")
  • raw_author_name string nullable
  • author_position string nullable
  • is_corresponding boolean nullable
  • raw_affiliation_strings 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 — Work not found 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.