GET /citations/search

uniprot.org:uniprot-api

Summary: Search citations
Operation ID: searchCitations
Auth: none

Search UniProt's curated citation database for scientific literature related to proteins. UniProt indexes publications that provide evidence for protein annotations, including functional studies, structure determinations, interaction experiments, and disease associations. Use this endpoint to find scientific papers related to specific proteins or topics. Each citation includes full bibliographic information (title, authors, journal, abstract when available) and statistics showing how many proteins reference this paper. This is useful for literature reviews, finding evidence for protein annotations, and connecting proteins to published research.

Original spec description

Search literature citations associated with UniProt entries.

Usage Tips

- Search by protein name (e.g., `query=p53`), PubMed ID (e.g., `query=PMID:12345678`), or topic - Results include complete citation details: authors, journal, volume, pages, publication date - `literatureAbstract` contains the paper abstract when available - `citationCrossReferences` links to external databases (PubMed, DOI, etc.) - `statistics` show how many reviewed and unreviewed proteins cite this paper - `citationType` indicates if it's UniProt-indexed literature or computational - Use this to trace annotation evidence back to original publications

Parameters (3)

format (string, query, optional, default: json)

Constraints: {'enum': ['json', 'xml']}

query (string, query, required)

Search query string (e.g., protein name or PMID)

size (integer, query, optional, default: 25)

Examples (3)

TitleTypeURLAction
Search citations by protein name curl https://rest.uniprot.org/citations/search?query=p53
Search citations by PMID curl https://rest.uniprot.org/citations/search?query=PMID:12345678
Search with result size limit curl https://rest.uniprot.org/citations/search?query=insulin&size=10

Probe History

Latency

Status Codes

TimeStatusLatencySize
2026-03-23 10:41:08.337200 400 134ms
2026-03-23 10:10:56.577412 200 125ms
2026-03-23 09:32:53.343640 200 153ms

Response Changes

WhenOldNew
2026-03-23 10:10:56.577412 7c2ea73c98e3 db10effdd8f9
2026-03-23 10:41:08.337200 db10effdd8f9 3bb245276f5f