CORE API v2
Agent-ready OpenAPI document · curated by JenticEducationLmsapiKey18 EndpointsREST
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For Agents
Search and retrieve open access research articles, journals and repository metadata across millions of harvested papers, with full-text PDF access where available.
Use for: Search CORE for open access papers about transformer language models, Get the full record for a CORE article by its CORE ID, Download the PDF for a specific CORE article, Find near-duplicate articles to a paper I have indexed
Not supported: Does not handle paywalled content licensing, citation export, or peer review workflows - use for open access article and repository discovery only.
This page describes an OpenAPI 3.0 specification for CORE API v2, derived from a third-party apis.guru copy of CORE's own Swagger 1.2 API document. CORE also publishes its own OpenAPI document, linked from its CORE API v3 reference docs, which covers the newer v3 interface. CORE is the world's largest aggregator of open access research, harvesting articles, journals and repositories and exposing them through a JSON API organised around three resource types. The 18 endpoints cover article retrieval by CORE ID with full-text PDF download, batch get and search, journal lookup by ISSN, repository metadata and similarity-based article discovery. Search supports an Elasticsearch-style query syntax over fields like title, authors, fullText and year, and authentication is an API key passed as a query parameter or header.
Install Jentic One Beta
Connect the CORE API v2 to your agent
Jentic One is a self-hosted execution layer for AI agents. It lets your agent call the CORE API v2, or any other public or private API you need. You set the rules, the agent never sees your credentials, and every call is logged.
Two steps, two machines. Install the instance in a safe environment, then register your agent from wherever it runs.
1
Step 1: Jentic One Host machine
# On the machine that will host your Jentic One instance:
curl -fsSL "https://jentic.com/install.sh?src=apis&api=%2Fapis%2Fcore.ac.uk%2Fcore-ac-uk" | sh2
Step 2: Agent machine
# On the machine where your agent runs (keep this separate from the instance):
curl -fsSL "https://jentic.com/install.sh?src=apis&api=%2Fapis%2Fcore.ac.uk%2Fcore-ac-uk" | sh
jentic register # connects your agent to your Jentic One instanceJentic One is in public beta. The setup above keeps your agent separate from the instance, which is what you want before using real credentials: an agent running as the same OS user as Jentic One can read its stored keys directly. Just evaluating? A single local install is fine to start. See the secure deployment guide for the tiers.
Capabilities
What an agent can do with CORE API v2 API.
Search articles using Elasticsearch-style queries across title, authors, full text and year
Retrieve a specific article by CORE ID and download its full-text PDF when available
Find near-duplicate articles for plagiarism detection or deduplication of search results
Look up journals by ISSN to inspect their indexed coverage in CORE
Browse repository metadata for institutional and subject repositories
Find articles similar to a piece of input text for related-paper discovery
Use Cases
Patterns agents use CORE API v2 API for, with concrete tasks.
★ Open Access Literature Search for Research Tools
Reference managers and research assistants can let users search CORE's open access corpus directly and retrieve metadata plus full text. The search endpoints accept Elasticsearch-style queries (e.g. title:psychology AND year:>2022) and the get endpoints pull full article records and PDFs for citation and reading.
GET /articles/search/{query} with the query 'title:transformer AND fullText:attention AND year:>2020' and return the top ten article CORE IDs with titles.
Plagiarism and Similarity Detection
Editorial workflows and academic integrity tools can use CORE's similarity endpoint to compare submitted text against the open access corpus. POST /articles/similar takes input text and returns the most similar CORE articles, while POST /articles/dedup surfaces near-duplicate clusters useful for editorial review.
POST /articles/similar with the abstract of a submitted manuscript and return the five highest-scoring matches with their CORE IDs and titles.
Repository and Journal Coverage Auditing
Library and scholarly communication teams can audit which institutional repositories and journals are indexed in CORE by listing repositories and journal records. POST /journals/get accepts batches of ISSNs to confirm coverage, supporting open access policy reporting and discoverability checks.
POST /journals/get with a list of department ISSNs and report which are indexed in CORE plus how many articles each has.
AI Research Assistant with CORE Retrieval
An AI research agent can ground answers in open access literature by searching CORE through Jentic, fetching full text, and citing CORE IDs in its responses. Jentic isolates the API key, while the agent simply describes its query intent and consumes the JSON results into its retrieval-augmented pipeline.
Use Jentic to search CORE for 'climate adaptation small island states' filtered to year:>2023 and pull full text via /articles/get/{coreId}/download/pdf for the top three results.
Key Endpoints
18 endpoints — this page describes an openapi 3.
METHOD
PATH
DESCRIPTION
GET
/articles/get/{coreId}
Get an article by CORE ID
GET
/articles/get/{coreId}/download/pdf
Download full-text PDF by CORE ID
GET
/articles/search/{query}
Search articles with an Elasticsearch-style query
POST
/articles/search
Batch article search
POST
/articles/similar
Find articles similar to input text
POST
/articles/dedup
Get near-duplicate articles
GET
/journals/get/{issn}
Find a journal by ISSN
GET
/articles/get/{coreId}
Get an article by CORE ID
GET
/articles/get/{coreId}/download/pdf
Download full-text PDF by CORE ID
GET
/articles/search/{query}
Search articles with an Elasticsearch-style query
POST
/articles/search
Batch article search
POST
/articles/similar
Find articles similar to input text
POST
/articles/dedup
Get near-duplicate articles
GET
/journals/get/{issn}
Find a journal by ISSN
Why Jentic?
What agents get from Jentic-routed access to this vendor.
Setup
Wiring the CORE API by hand means passing your apiKey as a query parameter and coding its article, journal, and repository search calls yourself. Through Jentic you install once, import the CORE API from the API Directory, store the key once, and your agent calls it.
Permission scoping
CORE is a read-only research API where the article or query target travels in the request, so scope this by operations: allow the agent the reads it needs, such as searching articles and finding similar papers, and nothing beyond that. Each operation you credit the agent with stays inside that allowed set.
Credential isolation
Your CORE API key is stored once, encrypted, by your own Jentic One instance and injected into the query string at execution time. It never enters the agent's prompt, logs, or context.
Intent-based discovery
Agents search Jentic by intent such as 'search CORE open access papers' or 'find similar CORE articles', and Jentic returns the matching articles, journals, or repositories operation with its query schema so the agent calls the right endpoint without browsing the reference docs.
Related APIs
Alternatives and complements available in the Jentic catalogue.
FAQs
Specific to using CORE API v2 API through Jentic.
Which OpenAPI specification does this CORE API v2 page describe?
A curated, agent-optimized Jentic specification covering 18 CORE API v2 operations for article, journal and repository access. CORE also publishes its own OpenAPI document at https://api.core.ac.uk/swagger/v3.json, which describes the newer CORE API v3 interface under different paths and is linked from CORE's own reference docs at api.core.ac.uk/docs/v3. The Jentic variant adds agent-facing operation descriptions and intent routing so an agent can find the right call without reading the reference docs. Get started with Jentic One, the self-hosted execution layer.
What authentication does the CORE API v2 use?
CORE uses an API key, accepted either as a query parameter or in a request header. Through Jentic the key sits in the credential vault and is attached to outbound requests at execution time.
Can I download the full-text PDF of an article through the CORE API v2?
Yes. GET /articles/get/{coreId}/download/pdf returns the full-text PDF when CORE has it harvested. Not every article has a PDF available, so check the response status before parsing the body.
How does CORE search query syntax work?
Search supports Elasticsearch-style queries over fields like title, description, fullText, authors, publisher, doi, oai, identifiers, language.name and year. Examples: title:psychology AND language.name:English, or repositoryDocument.metadataUpdated:>2024-01-01.
What rate limits apply to the CORE API v2?
The OpenAPI spec does not declare formal rate limits. Use the batch endpoints POST /articles/get and POST /journals/get for bulk lookups instead of looping single GETs, and back off on HTTP 429.
How do I find similar articles to a piece of text through Jentic with the CORE API v2?
Run pip install jentic, search Jentic with 'find similar CORE articles', load the operation schema for POST /articles/similar and execute it with the input text to receive ranked similar articles.
Can I limit what my agent is allowed to do with the CORE API?
Yes. Because you run Jentic One yourself, your own rules decide which CORE operations and credentials the agent may use. CORE is a read-only research API, so you scope it by operation: grant only the reads the agent needs, such as searching articles with GET /articles/search/{query} or finding similar papers with POST /articles/similar, and withhold everything else like journal or repository lookups. Each operation you credit to the agent stays inside that allowed set, and your stored API key is attached at execution time rather than exposed to the agent.
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