brycewang-stanford/lens-scholarly-api

Lens.org Scholarly and Patent API

Overview

Lens.org provides unified access to 300M+ scholarly articles and 150M+ patent records with cross-linkage between them. Uniquely, Lens connects academic research to patent citations, enabling innovation tracking and prior art discovery. The API offers full-text search, citation analysis, and patent-paper linkage. Free for non-commercial use with registration (up to 1,000 requests/day).

Authentication

# Register at https://www.lens.org/lens/user/subscriptions
# API token provided in your account settings
# Include in header: Authorization: Bearer YOUR_TOKEN

API Endpoints

Scholarly Search

# POST-based search
curl -X POST "https://api.lens.org/scholarly/search" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $LENS_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "query": {
      "match": {"field_of_study": "machine learning"}
    },
    "size": 20,
    "from": 0,
    "sort": [{"year_published": "desc"}]
  }'

# Boolean query
curl -X POST "https://api.lens.org/scholarly/search" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $LENS_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "query": {
      "bool": {
        "must": [
          {"match": {"title": "transformer"}},
          {"range": {"year_published": {"gte": 2023}}}
        ],
        "should": [
          {"match": {"abstract": "attention mechanism"}}
        ]
      }
    },
    "size": 25
  }'

Patent Search

curl -X POST "https://api.lens.org/patent/search" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $LENS_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "query": {
      "bool": {
        "must": [
          {"match": {"title": "neural network"}},
          {"term": {"jurisdiction": "US"}}
        ]
      }
    },
    "size": 20
  }'

Scholarly Fields

| Field | Description | Type | |-------|-------------|------| | title | Article title | text | | abstract | Abstract text | text | | author.display_name | Author name | text | | year_published | Publication year | integer | | source.title | Journal/venue name | text | | field_of_study | Research field | text | | doi | DOI identifier | keyword | | pmid | PubMed ID | keyword | | citing_patent_count | Patents citing this work | integer | | scholarly_citations_count | Citation count | integer | | open_access.is_oa | Open access status | boolean |

Python Usage

import os
import requests

TOKEN = os.environ["LENS_API_TOKEN"]
BASE_URL = "https://api.lens.org"
HEADERS = {
    "Authorization": f"Bearer {TOKEN}",
    "Content-Type": "application/json",
}


def search_scholarly(query: str, size: int = 20,
                     min_year: int = None,
                     fields: list = None) -> list:
    """Search Lens scholarly records."""
    must_clauses = [{"match": {"title": query}}]
    if min_year:
        must_clauses.append(
            {"range": {"year_published": {"gte": min_year}}}
        )

    body = {
        "query": {"bool": {"must": must_clauses}},
        "size": size,
        "sort": [{"scholarly_citations_count": "desc"}],
    }
    if fields:
        body["include"] = fields

    resp = requests.post(
        f"{BASE_URL}/scholarly/search",
        headers=HEADERS,
        json=body,
    )
    resp.raise_for_status()
    data = resp.json()

    results = []
    for doc in data.get("data", []):
        results.append({
            "title": doc.get("title"),
            "authors": [a.get("display_name", "")
                        for a in doc.get("authors", [])[:5]],
            "year": doc.get("year_published"),
            "source": doc.get("source", {}).get("title"),
            "doi": doc.get("doi"),
            "citations": doc.get("scholarly_citations_count", 0),
            "patent_citations": doc.get("citing_patent_count", 0),
            "open_access": doc.get("open_access", {}).get("is_oa"),
        })
    return results


def find_patent_cited_papers(topic: str, min_patents: int = 5) -> list:
    """Find papers cited by patents (innovation indicators)."""
    body = {
        "query": {
            "bool": {
                "must": [
                    {"match": {"title": topic}},
                    {"range": {"citing_patent_count": {"gte": min_patents}}},
                ]
            }
        },
        "size": 50,
        "sort": [{"citing_patent_count": "desc"}],
    }

    resp = requests.post(
        f"{BASE_URL}/scholarly/search",
        headers=HEADERS,
        json=body,
    )
    resp.raise_for_status()
    return resp.json().get("data", [])


# Example: find high-impact ML papers cited by patents
papers = search_scholarly("deep learning", size=10, min_year=2020)
for p in papers:
    print(f"[{p['year']}] {p['title']}")
    print(f"  Citations: {p['citations']} scholarly, "
          f"{p['patent_citations']} patent")

# Example: find industry-impactful research
patent_cited = find_patent_cited_papers("battery technology")
for doc in patent_cited[:5]:
    print(f"{doc['title']} — {doc.get('citing_patent_count')} patents")

Unique Features

• Patent-paper linkage: Discover which research is cited in patents
• Unified search: Scholarly + patent in one platform
• Innovation metrics: Track technology transfer from academia to industry
• Prior art search: Find relevant literature for patent applications

Rate Limits

| Tier | Daily requests | Results per query | |------|---------------|-------------------| | Free (non-commercial) | 1,000 | 1,000 | | Institutional | 10,000+ | 10,000 |

References

• Lens.org
• Lens API Documentation
• Lens Scholarly Search