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Awesome-Agent-Skills-for-Empirical-Research doaj-api

Search open access journals and articles in the DOAJ directory

install
source · Clone the upstream repo
git clone https://github.com/brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Agent-Skills-for-Empirical-Research
Claude Code · Install into ~/.claude/skills/
T=$(mktemp -d) && git clone --depth=1 https://github.com/brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Agent-Skills-for-Empirical-Research "$T" && mkdir -p ~/.claude/skills && cp -r "$T/skills/43-wentorai-research-plugins/skills/literature/fulltext/doaj-api" ~/.claude/skills/brycewang-stanford-awesome-agent-skills-for-empirical-research-doaj-api && rm -rf "$T"
manifest: skills/43-wentorai-research-plugins/skills/literature/fulltext/doaj-api/SKILL.md
source content

DOAJ API Guide

Overview

The Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) is a community-curated online directory that indexes and provides access to high quality, open access, peer-reviewed journals. Founded in 2003, DOAJ currently indexes over 20,000 journals and 9 million articles from 130 countries, covering all areas of science, technology, medicine, social sciences, arts, and humanities.

DOAJ serves as a quality filter for open access publishing. Journals must meet strict criteria to be included, including editorial review, transparent policies, and adherence to open access principles. This makes DOAJ particularly valuable for researchers who need to verify whether a journal is a legitimate open access outlet, librarians curating discovery systems, and developers building tools that surface OA content.

The DOAJ API provides free, unauthenticated access to search and retrieve journal and article metadata. All data is available under a CC BY-SA license. The API returns JSON and supports Elasticsearch-style queries for advanced filtering.

Authentication

No authentication required. The DOAJ API is fully open and free to use. No API key, registration, or email is needed. There are no published rate limits, but users should be respectful and avoid sending excessive concurrent requests. For bulk data access, DOAJ provides data dumps at https://doaj.org/docs/public-data-dump/.

Core Endpoints

Article Search: Find Open Access Articles

  • URL: 
    GET https://doaj.org/api/search/articles/{search_query}
  • Parameters:
    ParamTypeRequiredDescription
    search_querystringYesSearch query (URL path parameter, supports field-specific search)
    pageintegerNoPage number (default: 1)
    pageSizeintegerNoResults per page (default: 10, max: 100)
    sortstringNoSort field (e.g., created_date:desc)
  • Example: 
    curl "https://doaj.org/api/search/articles/climate+change?page=1&pageSize=10"
  • Response: JSON with 
    total
    count and 
    results
    array. Each result contains 
    bibjson
    with 
    title
    , 
    abstract
    , 
    author
    , 
    journal.title
    , 
    identifier
    (DOI, ISSN), 
    link
    (full-text URL), 
    year
    , 
    month
    , 
    keywords
    , and 
    subject
    .

Journal Search: Find Open Access Journals

  • URL: 
    GET https://doaj.org/api/search/journals/{search_query}
  • Parameters:
    ParamTypeRequiredDescription
    search_querystringYesJournal search query
    pageintegerNoPage number (default: 1)
    pageSizeintegerNoResults per page (default: 10, max: 100)
  • Example: 
    curl "https://doaj.org/api/search/journals/bioinformatics?page=1&pageSize=5"
  • Response: JSON with journal records containing 
    bibjson
    with 
    title
    , 
    alternative_title
    , 
    identifier
    (ISSN, EISSN), 
    publisher
    , 
    institution
    , 
    subject
    , 
    license
    , 
    apc
    (article processing charge info), 
    language
    , and 
    editorial.review_process
    .

Article by DOI: Direct Lookup

  • URL: 
    GET https://doaj.org/api/search/articles/doi:{doi}
  • Parameters:
    ParamTypeRequiredDescription
    doistringYesThe DOI to look up
  • Example: 
    curl "https://doaj.org/api/search/articles/doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0213676"
  • Response: JSON with matching article records from DOAJ-indexed journals.

Journal by ISSN: Direct Lookup

  • URL: 
    GET https://doaj.org/api/search/journals/issn:{issn}
  • Parameters:
    ParamTypeRequiredDescription
    issnstringYesThe ISSN to look up
  • Example: 
    curl "https://doaj.org/api/search/journals/issn:1932-6203"
  • Response: JSON with journal record including full metadata and policies.

Rate Limits

No published rate limits. DOAJ does not enforce strict API quotas. However, the service is maintained by a small nonprofit team. Best practices include limiting requests to a reasonable rate (2-5 per second), caching results, and using the public data dump for large-scale analyses. Abusive usage may result in IP blocking without notice.

Common Patterns

Verify Journal Quality

Check if a journal is indexed in DOAJ (a proxy for quality and legitimacy):

curl -s "https://doaj.org/api/search/journals/issn:2045-2322" | jq '{total: .total, title: .results[0].bibjson.title, publisher: .results[0].bibjson.publisher.name, license: .results[0].bibjson.license[0].type}'

Find OA Articles in a Subject Area

Search for articles within a specific discipline with full-text links:

curl -s "https://doaj.org/api/search/articles/bibjson.subject.term:neuroscience?pageSize=20" | jq '.results[] | {title: .bibjson.title, journal: .bibjson.journal.title, url: .bibjson.link[0].url, year: .bibjson.year}'

Check APC (Article Processing Charge) Information

Determine if a journal charges fees for publishing:

curl -s "https://doaj.org/api/search/journals/issn:2041-1723" | jq '.results[0].bibjson | {title: .title, has_apc: .apc.has_apc, apc_amount: .apc.max[0].price, currency: .apc.max[0].currency}'

References