Retration detailed metadata

Metadata Retrieval
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Hello Crossref,

the blog article “News: Crossref and Retraction Watch” ( https://doi.org/10.13003/c23rw1d9 ) shows an image of metadata on retractions such as “retraction-date”, “retraction-nature”, “source” of retraction notice and “reason”.

I cannot find those information in the json metadata I retrieve from Rest API. Even for the example provided in the blog article https://api.crossref.org/works/10.2147/cmar.s358886 I cannot reproduce the information.

How can the detailed information on retractions be retrieved?
Thank you very much in advance!
Eva

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Hi Eva,

Currently, the Retraction Watch data is only available via our Labs API, not our production REST API.

Initially it’s available as a .csv file which you can download using the following request:
https://api.labs.crossref.org/data/retractionwatch?mailto={your-email-address}

The Labs API also includes the Retraction Watch data in the /works route for works which have retractions that were identified by Retraction Watch. For example:
https://api.labs.crossref.org/works/10.2147/CMAR.S324920?mailto={your-email-address}

We do plan to eventually incorporate the Retraction Watch data into a fully-supported production API.

Best,
Shayn

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Dear Shayn,
thank you very much! What does it mean for me that the information are only available via the Labs API? Should I not use the Labs API as it is only for Crossref developers? Are the information provided by Labs API somehow less reliable?
Thank you for your reply!
Eva

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Hi Eva,

The Labs API is a wrapper around our production API - it proxies the result from the live API and folds additional experimental content into what comes back. It might be a little less reliable than our other APIs in terms of uptime, but it’s not bad!

It’s not just for developers so you’re welcome to use it and we’d encourage you to do so if you’re interested in the Retraction Watch data at this point.

We use it to try things out, for ourselves and for the community e.g. adding data on DOI resolutions, adding retraction data, before we integrate these into our REST API. The data in it might change without warning if we do use it to try out new stuff. That said, the retraction data in there is being updated each time we get a new file from Retraction Watch so it’s a good resource to look at that before we integrate it into our production APIs.

Let us know if you have more questions!
Rachael

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Crossref provides a REST API that allows you to access their metadata, but the availability of specific fields depends on how the metadata for a particular article is registered by the publisher. Not all publishers may include detailed retraction information in the metadata they deposit with Crossref. Crossref provides documentation on their metadata schema. Make sure to review the documentation to see if the fields you are looking for are part of the standard schema. If the information you need is not available in the Crossref metadata, you might want to contact the publisher directly. Publishers are responsible for depositing accurate and comprehensive metadata, and they may be able to provide you with the specific retraction details.