rplos (version 1.0.0)

rplos: Connect with PLoS API data

Description

rplos provides an R interface to the PLoS Search API. More information about each function can be found in its help documentation.

rplos functions

rplos functions make HTTP requests using the crul package, and parse json using the jsonlite package.

PLoS API key

You used to need an API key to use this package - no longer needed

Tutorials

See the rOpenSci website for a tutorial: https://ropensci.org/tutorials/rplos_tutorial.html

Throttling

Beware, PLOS recently has started throttling requests. That is, they will give error messages like "(503) Service Unavailable - The server cannot process the request due to a high load", which probably means you've done too many requests in a certain time period.

Here's what they say (http://api.plos.org/solr/faq/#solr_api_recommended_usage) on the matter:

"Please limit your API requests to 7200 requests a day, 300 per hour, 10 per minute and allow 5 seconds for your search to return results. If you exceed this threshold, we will lock out your IP address. If you're a high-volume user of the PLOS Search API and need more API requests a day, please contact us at [e-mail] to discuss your options. We currently limit API users to no more than five concurrent connections from a single IP address.""

Examples

# NOT RUN {
searchplos(q='ecology', fl=c('id','publication_date'), limit = 2)

# Get only full article DOIs
out <- searchplos(q="*:*", fl='id', fq='doc_type:full', start=0, limit=250)
head(out$data)

# Get DOIs for only PLoS One articles
out <- searchplos(q="*:*", fl='id', fq='journal_key:PLoSONE',
  start=0, limit=15)
head(out$data)
# }
# NOT RUN {
# }