scholarly-metadata
The Lens
A combined search and analytics platform covering scholarly works alongside patents, with more than 270 million records. The web interface lets you search and cross-reference research and patent literature in one place. Its API is approval-gated and largely paid, so the practical route is the website, useful when a question spans both academic publications and patents.
No programmatic check, opens the archive’s own search.
Why it’s useful & how it works
The Lens is the most practical free tool when your question spans both academic publications and patents, for example finding the papers that underpin a technology area, or checking whether a research result has been commercialised. You search and filter on lens.org, which lets you combine scholarly and patent queries in one interface and export results for analysis. Programmatic API access is approval-gated and largely paid, so for most researchers the web interface is the way in. Echo links you to a pre-composed search on the site.
What’s inside
More than 200 million scholarly records combined with more than 136 million patent records, sourced from PubMed, Crossref, and major patent offices worldwide.
API access
https://api.lens.org/scholarly/search (POST, token)
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
- Responded HTTP 200 1.9 s
- Through a datacenter proxy
- Responded HTTP 200 5.2 s
- API, direct
- Blocked HTTP 401 615 ms
- API, through a proxy
- Blocked HTTP 401 886 ms
Reachability measured 2026-08-22.
Access
Programmatic API access (a key may be required, see the API tag).