SciNet API Documentation

Overview

SciNet API is a hosted REST service for scientific knowledge-graph retrieval. It is designed for AI agents, research tools, command-line clients, and scientific workflow systems.

Use it to retrieve papers from structured research plans, discover related authors, look up author publications, mine support papers, and query token status or usage.

Graph-aware retrieval

Follow keywords, citations, paper relations, and author links instead of relying on plain keyword matching.

Agent-ready JSON

Structured request and response shapes make the API easy to call from CLI tools and AI agents.

Personal access control

Email-verified tokens support status checks, usage tracking, and public API access.

Base URL

http://scinet.openkg.cn

Authentication

Most endpoints require a valid SciNet API token. Use the Authorization header when possible; X-API-Key is kept for compatibility.

Authorization: Bearer YOUR_SCINET_TOKEN
X-API-Key: YOUR_SCINET_TOKEN

Public endpoints include health check, browser registration, sending email verification codes, and token registration.

Getting a token

Open the registration page, complete email verification, and copy the returned scinet_xxx token. The token is shown only once, so store it securely.

API Endpoints

Browse endpoint details, copy code examples, or send the selected request from the playground.

Common Request Objects

The high-level search endpoints share a structured research plan and retrieval options.

Plan object

Field	Type	Description
`query_text`	string	Natural-language topic, idea, or search intent.
`source_type`	string	Input type, such as idea_text, paper_title, or topic.
`keywords`	array	Weighted keyword anchors, for example high:open world agent.
`titles`	array	Known paper-title anchors.
`reference_titles`	array	Reference-paper anchors used to guide retrieval.

Options object

Field	Type	Description
`top_k`	integer	Number of main results to return.
`retrieval_mode`	string	keyword, semantic, title, or hybrid.
`ranking_profile`	string	precision, balanced, discovery, or impact.

Error Handling & Rate Limits

Errors use regular HTTP status codes plus a short error type in the response body.

Status	Error type	Meaning
400	`BadRequest`	Invalid payload or verification code.
401	`MissingApiKey` / `InvalidApiKey`	Missing or invalid token.
403	`TokenDisabled` / `TokenExpired`	Disabled or expired token.
429	`QuotaExceeded`	Daily quota exhausted.
500	`ServerError`	Backend or email service error.

Each personal token has a daily quota. Heavier retrieval endpoints may consume more request units than lightweight status endpoints.