scholarly-metadata
Dimensions (Digital Science)
A linked research database connecting publications, grants, patents, clinical trials, and policy documents, with over 140 million publications. You search it through its web application. Programmatic access is subscription- and approval-gated, so use the site directly when you need to follow a topic across funding, trials, and policy as well as papers.
No programmatic check, opens the archive’s own search.
Why it’s useful & how it works
Dimensions is useful when you need to follow a topic across multiple research outputs at once: publications, the grants that funded them, clinical trials they informed, and policy documents that cite them, all linked in one place. You search through the Dimensions web application at dimensions.ai, which is freely accessible for basic searching. Programmatic access requires a subscription or institutional licence, so the practical route for most users is the website. Echo links you directly there so you can run your search without navigating from scratch.
What’s inside
More than 160 million research publications connected by over 1.3 billion citations, alongside more than 7 million grants, 150 million patents, and a growing body of clinical trial and policy records.
API access
DSL at https://app.dimensions.ai/api/dsl (JWT)
An API key is required (usually free); see the endpoints above for where to get one.
What we measured
Our own probes, not the archive’s own claims. Re-run periodically; every reading below is dated.
Reachability
- Direct request
- Cloudflare challenge HTTP 200 760 ms (challenge-platform)
- Through a datacenter proxy
- Cloudflare challenge HTTP 200 846 ms (challenge-platform)
- API, direct
- Not found HTTP 404 666 ms
- API, through a proxy
- Not found HTTP 404 664 ms
Reachability measured 2026-08-22.
Access
Programmatic API access (a key may be required, see the API tag).