CrossRef API Guide

Overview

CrossRef is the official DOI registration agency for scholarly publishing, maintaining metadata for over 150 million content items including journal articles, books, conference proceedings, preprints, and datasets. The CrossRef REST API provides free, open access to this metadata, making it the authoritative source for resolving Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs) and retrieving standardized publication records.

Publishers deposit metadata with CrossRef when they register DOIs for their content. This makes the CrossRef API a reliable source for bibliographic information, citation counts, licensing data, funder acknowledgments, and links to full-text resources. The API is used extensively in reference management, citation analysis, and research information systems.

The API is free and requires no authentication. Users who include a mailto parameter in their requests are placed in the "polite pool" which provides faster and more reliable service.

Authentication

No authentication required. For best performance, include your email to access the polite pool:

https://api.crossref.org/works?mailto=your@email.com

Users in the polite pool receive prioritized responses and are not subject to the same rate limiting as anonymous users. CrossRef Plus subscribers get additional benefits including guaranteed uptime and higher throughput.