Wikidata REST API

Version: 0.0.2
API URL: https://w3id.org/oc/wikidata/api/v1
Contact: contact@opencitations.net
License: This document is licensed with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, while the REST API itself has been created using RAMOSE, the Restful API Manager Over SPARQL Endpoints created by Silvio Peroni, which is licensed with an ISC license. All the data returned by this API are made freely available under a Creative Commons public domain dedication (CC0).

Description back to top

A RAMOSE API implementation for Wikidata

Parameters back to top

Parameters can be used to filter and control the results returned by the API. They are passed as normal HTTP parameters in the URL of the call. They are:

  1. require=<field_name>: all the rows that have an empty value in the <field_name> specified are removed from the result set - e.g. require=given_name removes all the rows that do not have any string specified in the given_name field.

  2. filter=<field_name>:<operator><value>: only the rows compliant with <value> are kept in the result set. The parameter <operation> is not mandatory. If <operation> is not specified, <value> is interpreted as a regular expression, otherwise it is compared by means of the specified operation. Possible operators are "=", "<", and ">". For instance, filter=title:semantics? returns all the rows that contain the string "semantic" or "semantics" in the field title, while filter=date:>2016-05 returns all the rows that have a date greater than May 2016.

  3. sort=<order>(<field_name>): sort in ascending (<order> set to "asc") or descending (<order> set to "desc") order the rows in the result set according to the values in <field_name>. For instance, sort=desc(date) sorts all the rows according to the value specified in the field date in descending order.

  4. format=<format_type>: the final table is returned in the format specified in <format_type> that can be either "csv" or "json" - e.g. format=csv returns the final table in CSV format. This parameter has higher priority of the type specified through the "Accept" header of the request. Thus, if the header of a request to the API specifies Accept: text/csv and the URL of such request includes format=json, the final table is returned in JSON.

  5. json=<operation_type>("<separator>",<field>,<new_field_1>,<new_field_2>,...): in case a JSON format is requested in return, tranform each row of the final JSON table according to the rule specified. If <operation_type> is set to "array", the string value associated to the field name <field> is converted into an array by splitting the various textual parts by means of <separator>. For instance, considering the JSON table [ { "names": "Doe, John; Doe, Jane" }, ... ], the execution of array("; ",names) returns [ { "names": [ "Doe, John", "Doe, Jane" ], ... ]. Instead, if <operation_type> is set to "dict", the string value associated to the field name <field> is converted into a dictionary by splitting the various textual parts by means of <separator> and by associating the new fields <new_field_1>, <new_field_2>, etc., to these new parts. For instance, considering the JSON table [ { "name": "Doe, John" }, ... ], the execution of dict(", ",name,fname,gname) returns [ { "name": { "fname": "Doe", "gname": "John" }, ... ].

It is possible to specify one or more filtering operation of the same kind (e.g. require=given_name&require=family_name). In addition, these filtering operations are applied in the order presented above - first all the require operation, then all the filter operations followed by all the sort operation, and finally the format and the json operation (if applicable). It is worth mentioning that each of the aforementioned rules is applied in order, and it works on the structure returned after the execution of the previous rule.

Example: <api_operation_url>?require=doi&filter=date:>2015&sort=desc(date).

Operations back to top

The operations that this API implements are:

/metadata/{dois} back to operations

This operation retrieves the metadata for all the articles identified by the input DOIs.

It is possible to specify one or more DOIs as input of this operation. In this case, the DOI should be separated with a double underscore ("__") – e.g. "10.1108/jd-12-2013-0166__10.1016/j.websem.2012.08.001__...". The fields returned by this operation are:

Note: this operation strictly depends on external services (i.e. doi.org and associate applications) for gathering all the metadata of the articles requested. In fact, these metadata are not stored in COCI and are retrieved dynamically upon request.

Accepted HTTP method(s) get

Parameter(s) dois: type str, regular expression shape \"?10\..+[^_\"]((__|\" \")10\..+[^_])*\"?

Result fields typeqid (str), author (str), year (datetime), title (str), source_title (str), source_id (str), volume (str), issue (str), page (str), doi (str), reference (str), citation_count (int)

Example/metadata/10.1108/jd-12-2013-0166__10.1038/nature12373

Exemplar output (in JSON)

[
    {
        "source_title": "Journal of Documentation",
        "page": "253-277",
        "volume": "71",
        "reference": "10.1136/BMJ.B2680; 10.1145/1816123.1816198; 10.1145/2362499.2362502; 10.1007/978-3-642-41242-4_6; 10.1016/J.WEBSEM.2012.08.001; 10.1371/JOURNAL.PCBI.1000361",
        "qid": "Q24260641",
        "citation_count": "1",
        "issue": "2",
        "year": "2015",
        "doi": "10.1108/JD-12-2013-0166",
        "author": "Dutton, Alexander; Peroni, Silvio; Shotton, David",
        "title": "Setting our bibliographic references free: towards open citation data"
    },
    {
        "source_title": "Nature",
        "page": "54-58",
        "volume": "500",
        "reference": "10.1021/NN201142F; 10.1021/NL300389Y; 10.1158/0008-5472.CAN-11-3536; 10.1038/NRC3180; 10.3402/NANO.V3I0.11586; 10.1038/NCOMMS1714; 10.1038/NATURE07279; 10.1007/S10549-012-2393-X; 10.1371/JOURNAL.PONE.0049021; 10.1016/J.CELL.2009.11.006; 10.1073/PNAS.0909350107; 10.1038/NMETH.1278; 10.1021/JP073938O; 10.1016/J.CANLET.2004.02.004; 10.1038/NMETH818; 10.1038/NATURE03509",
        "qid": "Q34460861",
        "citation_count": "59",
        "issue": "7460",
        "year": "2013",
        "doi": "10.1038/NATURE12373",
        "author": "",
        "title": "Nanometre-scale thermometry in a living cell."
    }
]