Research Activities API
The Research Activities API is a RESTful Web Service that provides machine access to research activity information contributed to Research Data Australia (RDA) by Australia’s principal research funders (grants) and Australian research institutions and agencies (projects). You can read more about the research grants and projects discovery service and explore its content to see what lies behind this API.
Example use cases for this API include:
- Lookup and/or Validation when research grant identifiers are required in input forms for systems such as institutional repositories
- Retrieve the details of a particular research grant for display in your system based on its identifier
- Building research profiles for researchers and institutions
- Including discovery of Australian research activity in your system or service
Usage
Before you start! To use this service, institutions or individuals must register for a free API key.
Resource URL
https://researchdata.edu.au/api/v2.0/registry/activities?api_key={apiKey}&{params}- Replace
{YOUR API KEY}with the key your organisation registered (no API key? register for free) - Replace
{params}with some combination of the parameters below. Note: all parameter values must be URL-encoded. - Issue a HTTP GET request.
- By default, results are limited to 30 records per request. Use the
startandrowsparameters to step through additional results.
Service Parameters
| Parameter | Description | Example Usage |
| q | Used to search in all indexed text fields for specified keyword(s) | activities?q=cognition%20AND%20chemotherapy activities?q=”sodium channels” activities?q=Desmond Butler |
| type | Use this parameter to limit a search to specific activity types. Supported values = ‘grants’, ‘programs’ or ‘projects’ | activities?type=grant |
| status | Use this parameter to limit a search to activities in a specific status. Supported values = ‘closed’, ‘active’, ‘pending’, or ‘other’ | activities?status=closed |
| purl | Use this parameter to return an activity with a specific purl grant identifier for an Australian research grant. Note that the entire PURL must be passed. | activities?purl = http://purl.org/au-research/grants/arc/LP0455245 |
| identifier | This parameter can be used to search for activities which contain the specified identifier value/text in an identifier field. | activities?identifier=DP110102483 |
| title | This parameter can be used to search for activities which contain the specified text in a title field. Note: The title parameter searches through the Alternative and Abbreviated titles for a record. These titles however are NOT returned in the API response. | activities?title=cancer%20AND%20cluster |
| subject | Use this parameter to search for activities which contain the specified text in any of the subjects assigned to an activity (including ANZSRC fields of research). Note: ANZSRC-FOR & SEO subject codes can also be passed. However not all activities in RDA contain these subject codes. | activities?subject=intelligent%20agents activities?subject=04 (04 = ANZSRC-FOR Earth Sciences) |
| description | This parameter can be used to search for activities which contain the specified text in either the brief or full description. | activities?description=molecular%20fusion |
| institution | Use this parameter to search for activities that are related to a party of type ‘group’ whose title contains/matches the specified text. Tip: Wrap values in double quotes ” ” to ensure exact matches. | activities?institution=”University%20of%20Sydney” |
| funder | Use this parameter to search for activities that are related to a party of type ‘group’ with a relation of ‘isFundedBy’ AND whose title contains/matches the specified text. Tip: Wrap values in double quotes ” ” to ensure exact matches | activities?funder=”australian%20research%20council” |
| principalInvestigator | This parameter can be used to search for activities that are related to a party with a relation of ‘hasPrincipalInvestigator’ AND whose title contains/matches the specified text. | activities?principalInvestigator=Jacob%20AND%20George |
| researcher | Use this parameter to search for activities that are related to a party whose title contains/matches the specified text. | activities?researcher=Jacob%20George |
| fundingScheme | This parameter can be used to search for activities which contain the specified text in the funding scheme as specified by the funder. | activities?fundingScheme=”discovery%20projects” |
| addedSince | Use this parameter to limit the results to records that have been added to RDA since the specified date-time. Supported date format = W3CDTF | activities?addedSince=2015-11-28 |
| modifiedSince | Use this parameter to limit the results to records that have been modified since the specified date-time Supported date format = W3CDTF | activities?modifiedSince=2015-11-28 |
| limit | Use this parameter to limit the number of grants returned by the API (default: 30 – max:1000) | activities?title=fish&limit=5 |
| offset | Use this parameter to offset the grants returned by this number (used to “cursor” through large result sets) | activities?title=fish&limit=15&offset=75 |
Response Format
- Responses from this service are returned in JSON format.
- Results are wrapped inside a data object, which is returned when the status is
OK - If no records matched your result, the
dataobject will be an empty array - Responses are ordered based on the search query and a relevance default ranking. The default ranking will push records with a higher relevancy up while keeping the records that match in the record set. The default ordering is: title, identifiers, researchers, descriptions and anywhere the text occurred.
| Field Name | Value |
| id | The unique identifier used by the ARDC Registry to manage the record |
| key | The key assigned to the activity by the provider |
| title | The display title of the activity |
| type | The type of activity (‘grants’, ‘programs’ or ‘projects’) |
| description | The description of the activity (all description elements of type “brief” or “full”) |
| institutions | Array list of institutions participating in this research activity |
| researchers | Array list of the researchers named on the awarded grant, or involved with an activity |
| status | The status of the activity (‘closed’, ‘active’, ‘pending’, or ‘other’) |
| fundingAmount | The total budget allocated to a research grant by the funder |
| fundingScheme | The funding scheme or funding program that a grant has been awarded under |
| startDate | The commencement date for funding if it is a grant (often just a year or a month) or for the project if it is a project |
| endDate | The completion date (as above) |
| dateTimeModified | The date-time the activity record was added to RDA |
| dateTimeCreated | The date-time the activity record was last changed in RDA |
| funder | The name and acronym of the organisation that funded a research grant, program or project |
| managingInstitution | The institution managing the grant or project |
| principalInvestigator | The person named as the lead investigator for the research activity |
| purl | Standard purl grant identifier (the research sector is encouraged to always use this identifier when referring to a grant) |
| identifiers | Array list of identifiers assigned to the activity record. |
| subjects | Array list of subjects assigned to the activity. |
| links | Hypermedia links |
Example Usage
Validate a grant ID provided in an input form field to retrieve the purl grant identifier
Return the grant with ID “910771”:
- HTTP GET Request:
> activities?type=grant&identifier=910771
Grants for a particular organisation
Return all grants that were managed by Queensland University of Technology in the area of Agriculture and Veterinary Science – ANZSRC-FOR code “07”:
Grants from particular funding organisation
Return all grants funded by the Department of the Environment:
- HTTP GET Request:
> activities?type=grant&funder="Australian Research Council"
Grants and projects by a particular researcher with a particular phrase in the title
Return all grants and projects involving “David Cook” which contain the phrase “sodium channels” in the title. (note that results will contain those with just “cook” in a person name or just “David” but those with both close together will be ranked higher)
- HTTP GET Request:
> activities?researcher=David%20Cook&title="sodium%20channels"
Grants and projects which mention both cognition and chemotherapy
Return all completed grants and projects which contain both the terms “cognition” and “chemotherapy” in any free text field (note that the closer the terms are together the higher the ranking)
- HTTP GET Request:
> activities?q=cognition%20AND%20chemotherapy&status=closed