Search guide

This guide explains how to perform advanced search queries on Zenodo using easy to understand examples.

Simple search (one or multiple terms)

Example: open science

Results will match records with the terms open or science in any field. Note that stemming is applied so e.g. science will also match sciences. Search results are ranked according to an algorithm that takes your query terms into account.

You can require presence of both terms using either the + or AND operator:

Examples: +open +science or open AND science

You can require absence of one or more terms using either the - or NOT operator:

Examples: -open +science or NOT open AND science

Phrase search

Example: "open science"

Results will match records with the phrase open science in any field.

Field search

Example: title:open

Results will match records with the term open in the field title. If you want to search for multiple terms in the title you must group the terms using parenthesis:

Example: title:(open science)

See the field reference below for the full list of fields you can search.

Combined simple, phrase or field search

Example: +title:"open science" -title:policy or e.g. title:(-open +science)

You can combine simple, phrase and field search to construct advanced search queries.

Range search

Example: publication_date:[2017-01-01 TO 2018-01-01] (note, you must capitalize TO).

Results will match any record with a publication date between 2017-01-01 and 2018-01-01 (both dates inclusive).

Use square brackets ([]) for inclusive ranges and use curly brackets ({}) for exclusive ranges, e.g.:

[2017-01-01 TO 2018-01-01} is equivalent to [2017-01-01 TO 2017-12-31].

Examples of other ranges:

publication_date:{* TO 2017-01-01}: All days until 2017.
publication_date:[2017-01-01 TO *]: All days from 2017.
size:[1000000 TO *]: File size bigger than 1MB.
size:>1000000: File size bigger than 1MB.
size:>=1000000: File size bigger than or equal to 1MB.

Ranking/Sorting

By default all searches are sorted according to an internal ranking algorithm that scores each match against your query. In both the user interface and REST API, it's possible to sort the results by:

Most recent
Publication date
Title
Conference session
Journal
Version

Regular expressions

Regular expressions are a powerful pattern matching language that allow to search for specific patterns in a field. For instance if we wanted to find all records with a DOI-prefix 10.5281 we could use a regular expression search:

Example: doi:/10\.5281\/.+/

Careful, the regular expression must match the entire field value. See the regular expression syntax for further details.

Missing values

It is possible to search for records that either are missing a value or have a value in a specific field using the _exists_ and _missing_ field names.

Example: _missing_:notes (all records without notes)

Example: _exists_:notes (all records with notes)

Advanced concepts

Boosting

You can use the boost operator ^ when one term is more relevant than another. For instance, you can search for all records with the phrase open science in either title or description field, but rank records with the phrase in the title field higher:

Example: title:"open science"^5 description:"open science"

Fuzziness

You can search for terms similar to but not exactly like your search term using the fuzzy operator ~.

Example: oepn~

Results will match records with terms similar to oepn which would e.g. also match open.

Proximity searches

A phrase search like "open science" by default expect all terms in exactly the same order, and thus for instance would not match a record containing the phrase "open access and science". A proximity search allows that the terms are not in the exact order and may include other terms inbetween. The degree of flexiblity is specified by an integer afterwards:

Example: "open science"~5

Wildcards

You can use wildcards in search terms to replace a single character (using ? operator) or zero or more characters (using * operator).

Example: ope? scien*

Wildcard searches can be slow and should normally be avoided if possible.

Fields reference

The table below lists the data type of each field. Below is a quick description of what each data type means and what is possible.

string: Field does not require exact match (example field: title).
string (exact): Field requires exact match (example field: doi).
CV: Controlled vocabularies are similar to "string (exact)" but takes only a specific list of values.
integer: A number (range queries possible).
datetime: An ISO8601 date or datetime, e.g. 2017-12-31 (range queries possible).
boolean: true or false.

Field name	Type	Notes
`access_conditions`	string
`access_right`	CV	See "Access rights (CV)" below.
`alternate.identifier`	string (exact)
`alternate.scheme`	CV	See "Identifier schemes (CV)" below.
`communities`	string (exact)	Identifier of community.
`conceptdoi`	string (exact)	Related to DOI versioning.
`contributors.\*`	string	Contributors name, affiliation, type and ORCID
`contributors.affiliation`	string
`contributors.name`	string
`contributors.orcid`	string (exact)
`contributors.type`	CV	See "Contributor types (CV)" below.
`created`	datetime	Creation timestamp of record in Zenodo.
`creators.\*`	string
`creators.affiliation`	string
`creators.name`	string
`creators.orcid`	string (exact)
`description`	string
`doi`	string (exact)
`embargodate`	datetime
`filecount`	integer	Number of files in record.
`filename`	string (exact)
`filetype`	string (exact)	File extension (e.g. `pdf`).
`grants.\*`	string
`grants.acronym`	string
`grants.code`	string (exact)
`grants.funder.\*`	string
`grants.funder.acronyms`	string
`grants.funder.doi`	string (exact)	Open Funder Registry DOI
`grants.funder.name`	string
`grants.program`	string
`grants.title`	string
`imprint.\*`	string
`imprint.place`	string
`imprint.publisher`	string
`isbn`	string (exact)
`journal.\*`	string
`journal.issue`	string
`journal.pages`	string
`journal.title`	string
`journal.volume`	string
`journal.year`	string
`keywords`	string
`language`	CV	ISO639 two or three letter language code.
`license.\*`	string
`license.identifier`	CV
`license.license`	string (exact)
`license.url`	string (exact)
`meeting.\*`	string
`meeting.acronym`	string (exact)
`meeting.dates`	string
`meeting.place`	string
`meeting.session_part`	string (exact)
`meeting.session`	string (exact)
`meeting.title`	string
`meeting.url`	string (exact)
`notes`	string
`owners`	integer
`part_of.\*`	string
`part_of.pages`	string
`part_of.title`	string
`publicationdate`	datetime	Date of publication (see also `created` and `updated` fields).
`recid`	integer	Zenodo specific record identifier.
`references.\*`	string
`related.identifier`	string (exact)
`related.scheme`	CV	See "Identifier schemes (CV)" below.
`related.relation`	CV	See "Relations (CV)" below.
`relations.version.count`	integer	Number of versions of record.
`resource_type.subtype`	CV	See "Resource types (CV)" below.
`resource_type.type`	CV	See "Resource types (CV)" below.
`size`	integer	File size in bytes.
`subject.term`	string
`subject.identifier`	string (exact)
`title`	string
`type`	CV	See also `resource_type` field, as well as "Resource types (CV)" below.
`updated`	datetime	Timestamp of last update to record
`version`	string	Version information text (e.g. `v1.0.2`)