The University of Alabama Libraries Scholarly API Cookbook is an open online book containing short scholarly API code examples (i.e., “recipes”) that demonstrate how to work with various scholarly web service APIs. It is part of the University of Alabama Libraries efforts to support Research Data Services. Read the book here.
All code in this book is licensed with the permissive MIT license. Please feel free to reuse or adapt the code in your teaching and research.
We have endeavored to follow the appropriate usage policies of each scholarly API, web service, and Z39.50 server. We have linked to the policies where possible. Please be responsible when reusing these scripts and respect the usage policies (e.g., query limits, record downloads, data sharing restrictions). Code output snippets shown in this book are for demonstration purposes and credited to the individual API or database service.
If you reuse the code, attribution would be appreciated. Please link to the Cookbook and cite our manuscript:
Link to Cookbook: https://ualibweb.github.io/UALIB_ScholarlyAPI_Cookbook/
Citation: Scalfani, V. F.; Walker, K. W.; Simpson, L.; Fernandez, A. M.; Patel, V. D.; Ramig, A.; Gomes, C.; Moen, M. T.; Nguyen, A. M. Creating a Scholarly API Cookbook: Supporting Library Users with Programmatic Access to Information. Issues in Science and Technology Librarianship, 2023, No. 104. https://doi.org/10.29173/istl2766.
@article{scalfani_creating_2023,
title = {Creating a {Scholarly} {API} {Cookbook}: {Supporting} {Library} {Users} with {Programmatic} {Access} to {Information}},
issn = {1092-1206},
shorttitle = {Creating a {Scholarly} {API} {Cookbook}},
url = {https://journals.library.ualberta.ca/istl/index.php/istl/article/view/2766},
doi = {10.29173/istl2766},
abstract = {Scholarly web-based application programming interfaces (APIs) allow users to interact with information and data programmatically. Interacting with information programmatically allows users to create advanced information query workflows and quickly access machine-readable data for downstream computations. With the growing availability of scholarly APIs from open and commercial library databases, supporting access to information via an API has become a key support area for research data services in libraries. This article describes our efforts with supporting API access through the development of an online Scholarly API Cookbook. The Cookbook contains code recipes (i.e., tutorials) for getting started with 10 different scholarly APIs, including for example, Scopus, World Bank, and PubMed. API tutorials are available in Python, Bash, Matlab, and Mathematica. A tutorial for interacting with library catalog data programmatically via Z39.50 is also included, as traditional library catalog metadata is rarely available via an API. In addition to describing the Scholarly API Cookbook content, we discuss our experiences building a student research data services programming team, challenges we encountered, and ideas to improve the Cookbook. The University of Alabama Libraries Scholarly API Cookbook is freely available and hosted on GitHub. All code within the API Cookbook is licensed with the permissive MIT license, and as a result, users are free to reuse and adapt the code in their teaching and research.},
number = {104},
urldate = {2023-10-13},
journal = {Issues in Science and Technology Librarianship},
author = {Scalfani, Vincent F. and Walker, Kevin W. and Simpson, Lance and Fernandez, Avery M. and Patel, Vishank D. and Ramig, Anastasia and Gomes, Cyrus and Moen, Michael T. and Nguyen, Adam M.},
month = oct,
year = {2023},
}