PLOS Search API

PLOS Search API

PLOS (Public Library of Science) provides a keyless Solr-based search API over its published articles. Its API FAQ says: "The entire PLOS corpus of research articles is regularly indexed on PLOS servers running Apache Solr."

Coverage

PLOS article metadata, abstracts and DOIs, searchable by field (e.g. title, id) via the `api.plos.org/search` Solr endpoint. The FAQ says: "Please do not send requests that return more than 100 rows." History start and update frequency: Not stated.

Verdict

Search over PLOS-published article metadata, abstracts and DOIs via a keyless Solr API. Licensed Custom: PLOS's Terms of Use say "Unless otherwise indicated, articles and accompanying materials, including peer reviews, and other content published by PLOS on the PLOS Sites are licensed by the respective authors for use and distribution by you subject to citation of the original source in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license" or a comparable licence such as CC0; check each article's own licence. Rate limits, verbatim (API FAQ): "Please limit your API requests to 7200 requests a day, 300 per hour, 10 per minute and allow 5 seconds for your search to return results." Signal Lab links only.