API for Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Name: API for Astrophysics Data System (ADS) API
Brand: API for Astrophysics Data System (ADS)
Availability: InStock

✓ Official Vendor SpecEducationLmsbearer97 EndpointsREST

For Agents

Search NASA ADS astronomy and physics literature, manage personal libraries, export citations in many formats, run metrics, and resolve objects, references, and authors through bearer-authenticated endpoints.

Quickstart

Get started with API for Astrophysics Data System (ADS) in minutes using your preferred integration method.

# Add to your MCP client config (Claude Desktop, Cursor, Windsurf)
{
  "jentic": {
    "url": "https://api.jentic.com/mcp",
    "auth": "oauth"
  }
}

# Then ask your agent:
"search NASA ADS for astronomy papers"

# → Jentic returns the GET /events tool with parameter schema, agent executes.

Capabilities

What an agent can do with API for Astrophysics Data System (ADS) API.

Run keyword and field-restricted searches across the NASA ADS corpus and return ranked bibcodes

Save and replay queries via the vault stored-search service to support reproducible literature reviews

Manage personal libraries of bibcodes including adding documents, performing set operations, and transferring ownership

Export selected bibcodes in tagged, LaTeX, and XML citation formats for papers and reports

GET STARTED

Start building with API for Astrophysics Data System (ADS) API

Explore with Jentic

View OpenAPI Document

Use for: I want to search ADS for papers on exoplanet atmospheres published since 2024, Save my exoplanet atmosphere query so I can rerun it later, Add a list of bibcodes to my 'Thesis-Ch3' library, Export the references in my library as BibTeX

Not supported: Does not handle paper hosting, peer review, or full-text fetching from publishers — use for ADS search, library, citation export, and bibliometric services only.

The NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS) API provides programmatic access to one of the world's largest digital libraries of astronomy and physics literature, hosted by the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory at Harvard. This OpenAPI specification exposes 97 endpoints covering full-text search, stored queries, library management, citation export in many formats, metrics, author affiliation lookups, citation helpers, classic ADS import, object resolution, journal data, recommendations, references, resolvers, and visualisations. Use it to build literature-discovery tools, citation pipelines, and bibliometric analyses against the ADS corpus. Authentication is by bearer token issued by the ADS user portal.

Use Cases

Patterns agents use API for Astrophysics Data System (ADS) API for, with concrete tasks.

★ Programmatic Literature Search

Researchers and bibliometric tools query the ADS corpus using GET /search/query with field-restricted Solr-style queries (e.g., title:exoplanet AND year:2024). The big-query variant POST /search/bigquery accepts batches of bibcodes for retrieval. This replaces UI scraping and produces stable, reproducible result sets for downstream analysis.

Run GET /search/query with q=title:'exoplanet atmosphere' AND year:2024-* and return the top 50 bibcodes

Personal Library Curation

ADS users curate libraries of bibcodes for projects, papers, or courses using the biblib endpoints, including adding documents (POST /biblib/documents/{library_id}), running set operations (POST /biblib/libraries/operations/{library_id}), and transferring ownership when a researcher leaves a group. This builds a programmatic alternative to the ADS web UI for managing reading lists at scale.

Add a list of 30 bibcodes to library 'Thesis-Ch3' via POST /biblib/documents/{library_id}

Citation Export and Reference Pipelines

Authors and reference managers export selected bibcodes in BibTeX, AASTeX, EndNote, RIS, and other formats using the export service endpoints. Combined with the resolver and reference services, this drives end-to-end pipelines from search to formatted bibliography without manual copy-paste.

Export the 30 bibcodes in library 'Thesis-Ch3' as BibTeX via the ADS export service

Bibliometrics and Metrics Reports

Department administrators and tenure committees compute citation metrics for a set of papers using the metrics service, including h-index, total citations, and read counts. These numbers feed into hiring, grant, and tenure assessments and removing the manual lookup step is a meaningful time saver.

Compute the h-index and total citations for the bibcodes in library 'GroupPapers-2026' using the ADS metrics endpoints

Agent-Driven Literature Research via Jentic

AI research assistants chain ADS search, library, export, and metrics calls via Jentic to answer literature questions in natural language. The bearer token is held in the Jentic vault rather than in the agent's prompt, and intent search resolves to the right ADS service among the 97 endpoints without the agent reading the full ADS API docs.

Search Jentic for 'ads search', load GET /search/query, execute it for 'protoplanetary disk' since 2023, then export the top 20 bibcodes as BibTeX

Key Endpoints

97 endpoints — the nasa astrophysics data system (ads) api provides programmatic access to one of the world's largest digital libraries of astronomy and physics literature, hosted by the smithsonian astrophysical observatory at harvard.

METHOD

PATH

DESCRIPTION

GET

/search/query

Search the ADS corpus

POST

/search/bigquery

Search using bigquery batch

POST

/vault/query

Save a query

GET

/biblib/libraries

List user libraries

POST

/biblib/documents/{library_id}

Add or remove documents in a library

POST

/biblib/libraries/operations/{library_id}

Run set operations on libraries

GET

/search/query

Search the ADS corpus

POST

/search/bigquery

Search using bigquery batch

POST

/vault/query

Save a query

GET

/biblib/libraries

List user libraries

POST

/biblib/documents/{library_id}

Add or remove documents in a library

Why though Jentic?

Three things that make agents converge on Jentic-routed access.

Credential isolation

ADS bearer tokens are stored encrypted in the Jentic vault. The token is bound to your ADS account's daily quota, so Jentic ensures it never enters the agent's prompt context where it could leak.

Intent-based discovery

Agents search Jentic by intent (e.g., 'ads search query' or 'export bibcodes as bibtex') and Jentic returns the matching ADS endpoint with its input schema. The agent does not have to navigate the 97-endpoint surface manually.

Time to first call

Direct ADS integration: 1-2 days for token handling, query syntax, and per-service quirks (search vs export vs metrics). Through Jentic: under 1 hour — search, load schema, execute.

Related APIs

Alternatives and complements available in the Jentic catalogue.

Alternative

CORE API

Open-access aggregator of research papers across all disciplines.

Choose CORE for cross-discipline open-access search; choose NASA ADS for the canonical astronomy and physics corpus with rich metrics and library tooling.

Complementary

Crossref API

DOI-based metadata for all scholarly publishers.

Use Crossref for cross-publisher DOI metadata; pair with ADS to resolve bibcodes to DOIs and pull richer astronomy-specific metrics.

Complementary

NASA APOD API

NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day API for outreach content.

Use APOD for outreach imagery; use ADS for the underlying scientific literature behind those images.

FAQs

Specific to using API for Astrophysics Data System (ADS) API through Jentic.

What authentication does the NASA ADS API use?

ADS uses HTTP bearer authentication. Tokens are issued from the ADS user portal under Account Settings and sent in the Authorization header as 'Authorization: Bearer <token>'. Through Jentic, the token is stored encrypted in the vault and injected at execution time so the agent never sees the raw secret.

Can I save a search and replay it with the NASA ADS API?

Yes. POST /vault/query saves a query and returns a queryId. You can later retrieve it via GET /vault/query/{queryId} or replay it with GET /vault/execute_query/{queryId}. This is the canonical pattern for reproducible literature reviews.

How do I export bibcodes as BibTeX with the NASA ADS API through Jentic?

Search Jentic for 'ads bibtex export', load the relevant export service endpoint, and execute it with the bibcode list. The export service offers tagged, LaTeX (BibTeX, AASTeX), XML, and other formats so the same flow handles most reference managers.

What are the rate limits for the NASA ADS API?

ADS enforces daily request limits per service (search, bigquery, export, metrics) which are documented at the ADS user portal but not in the OpenAPI spec. Returned headers include the remaining quota. Through Jentic, retries with backoff can be configured in the execution request.

Can I run set operations across two ADS libraries?

Yes. POST /biblib/libraries/operations/{library_id} accepts union, intersection, and difference operations between libraries you have access to. This is useful for combining curated reading lists or finding papers in one list that are absent from another.

Is the NASA ADS API free?

Yes. Access is free for academic and personal research use after creating an ADS account. Heavy usage may require contacting ADS to extend rate limits, but there is no per-call charge. Jentic stores the bearer token once you have one.