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Application Program Interface (API)

An Application Program Interface (API) is a piece of code that allows programmers to communicate and pull data from databases. APIs are commonly used to pull data from websites including social media sites.

Related Resources: 
Figshare – API
MIT Libraries – APIs for Scholarly Resources
Purdue Libraries – Using Scholarly APIs for Text Data Mining
Related Terms: 
Data Mining
Data Reuse
Relevant Literature: 

Batrinca B, Treleaven PC. (2015). Social media analytics: a survey of techniques, tools and platforms. AI & SOCIETY, 30(1), 89–116. doi.org/10.1007/s00146-014-0549-4

Edmond J, Garnett V. (2015). APIs and Researchers: The Emperor’s New Clothes? International Journal of Digital Curation, 10(1). doi.org/10.2218/ijdc.v10i1.369

Grant C. (2016). Supporting a Passion for New Ideas through Open APIs. Information Services & Use, 36(1–2), 65–72. doi.org/10.3233/ISU-160798

Paten B, Diekhans M, Druker BJ, Friend S, Guinney J, Gassner N, … Haussler D. (2015). The NIH BD2K center for big data in translational genomics. Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, ocv047. https://doi.org/10.1093/jamia/ocv047.

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