inspirehep.net

About inspirehep.net

INSPIRE provides a REST API for programmatic access to its database of high energy physics scholarly information, complementing its regular web interface. The API is RESTful, returns results in JSON by default, and supports read-only GET operations for retrieving and searching records.

Records can be retrieved using internal INSPIRE identifiers (covering categories such as literature, authors, institutions, conferences, seminars, journals, jobs, experiments, and data) or external persistent identifiers including DOI, arXiv, and ORCID. Responses include record metadata along with creation and update timestamps, related links, and, for literature records, alternative serialization formats such as BibTeX.

Access is rate-limited to 15 requests per 5-second window per IP address, with excess requests returning a 429 status. Metadata is available under a CC0 license, though restrictions apply to certain fields and bulk collection of email addresses is not permitted. The API is intended for developers and researchers building tools or integrations that need programmatic access to high energy physics literature and related records.

Key features

• REST API for programmatic access to INSPIRE's high energy physics scholarly records
• Lookup records by external identifiers (DOI, arXiv ID, ORCID iD)
• Search endpoint with query, sort order, pagination, and metadata filtering
• Bibliography generator and alternative serialization formats like BibTeX
• Read-only GET requests returning JSON responses

Frequently asked questions