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Resolving external identifiers

Chive answers one question for the rest of the ATProto scholarly ecosystem: given a DOI, arXiv ID or ORCID, what is the AT-URI?

This is pub.chive.resolve.byExternalId. It is unauthenticated, cacheable, and intended for other applications to call. Semble, Margin and Lea all hold references to works by external identifier; this is how those become AT-URIs that address a record on the network.

Endpoint​

GET https://api.chive.pub/xrpc/pub.chive.resolve.byExternalId
ParameterRequiredDescription
systemyesdoi, arxiv, orcid, ror, isbn, pmid, wikidata
identifieryesThe identifier itself, with no resolver prefix

Pass 10.1000/abc, not https://doi.org/10.1000/abc.

Response​

{
  "found": true,
  "entityType": "eprint",
  "uri": "at://did:plc:author/pub.chive.eprint.submission/3k5abc",
  "cid": "bafyrei..."
}

entityType is eprint, author or graphNode. A knowledge-graph node is returned when the identifier names a concept, institution or venue rather than a work — a ROR ID resolves to the institution node, for instance.

When nothing matches:

{ "found": false }

found: false means Chive does not index that identifier, not that the work does not exist. Chive indexes eprints submitted to it and the authority records its community has approved. A DOI absent here may be present anywhere else.

Examples​

# A DOI
curl -s 'https://api.chive.pub/xrpc/pub.chive.resolve.byExternalId?system=doi&identifier=10.1000/abc'

# An ORCID, resolving to an author
curl -s 'https://api.chive.pub/xrpc/pub.chive.resolve.byExternalId?system=orcid&identifier=0000-0002-1825-0097'

Once you hold the AT-URI, read the record from the author's PDS with com.atproto.repo.getRecord, or from Chive's index with pub.chive.eprint.getSubmission. Reading it from the PDS is the more durable choice: that repository is where the record lives, and Chive is one index of it among however many come later.

Notes for callers​

  • No authentication. Anonymous rate limits apply; see Authentication.
  • Cache the answer. An identifier's AT-URI changes only if the record is deleted and resubmitted, which is rare.
  • One identifier per call. There is no batch form. If you need one, it is worth asking for rather than looping — say so in an issue.