nih-reporter

NIH RePORTER API

Public API exposing NIH and non-NIH agency awards (and linked publications). No authentication. Two endpoints — projects and publications. Returns JSON.

Endpoints

Endpoint	Use
POST https://api.reporter.nih.gov/v2/projects/search	Awards / projects
POST https://api.reporter.nih.gov/v2/publications/search	Publications linked to awards

Both are POST only (GET returns 405). Body is JSON, Content-Type: application/json.

Interactive Swagger docs: https://api.reporter.nih.gov/?urls.primaryName=V2.0

Rate Limits — Do Not Ignore

NIH publishes hard guidance, with IP-blocking as the stated consequence:

• ≤ 1 request per second sustained.
• Large jobs (anything that paginates beyond a few pages): run weekends, or weekdays 9pm–5am EST.
• Backoff on 429 and 5xx; do not retry tight.

For any pull > ~50 pages, add time.sleep(1.1) between requests and schedule for off-hours. Use a User-Agent that identifies you.

Pagination Limits

Field	Default	Max
limit	50	500
offset (projects)	0	14,999 (offset+limit ≤ 15,000)
offset (publications)	0	9,999

The 15k cap is hard — if your result set exceeds it, split the query by fiscal year, IC, or activity code rather than trying to page past it.

To know total results before paginating: the response includes meta.total. Issue one request with limit: 1 first if you need to plan a pull.

Minimal Request

curl -sS -X POST https://api.reporter.nih.gov/v2/projects/search \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{
    "criteria": {"fiscal_years": [2024], "pi_names": [{"any_name": "Mitchell"}]},
    "include_fields": ["ProjectNum","ProjectTitle","Organization","AwardAmount","FiscalYear","PrincipalInvestigators"],
    "limit": 25,
    "offset": 0,
    "sort_field": "project_start_date",
    "sort_order": "desc"
  }' | jq .

Payload Shape

{
  "criteria": { ... filters ... },
  "include_fields": [ ... PascalCase field names ... ],
  "exclude_fields": [ ... ],
  "offset": 0,
  "limit": 50,
  "sort_field": "project_start_date",
  "sort_order": "desc",
  "use_relevance": false
}