Lens

Lens is an open knowledge platform from Cambia that aggregates global scholarly works and patent records and exposes them through a REST API. The versioned API supports rich Elasticsearch-style queries, cursor pagination, and field projection across the full Lens scholarly and patent corpora, enabling research, science policy, technology landscape, and patent intelligence applications.

Lens publishes 2 APIs on the APIs.io network: Patents API and Scholarly API. Tagged areas include Scholarly, Patents, Research, Science, and Open Data.

Lens’ developer surface includes authentication, documentation, and 9 more developer resources.

🌐 Visit website 📡 Source on GitHub

35.0/100 thin ▬ flat Agent 20/100 agent aware saas Full breakdown ↓
scored 2026-09-08 · rubric v0.20.0

AccessFreemiumSelf serve⚡ Free to try

1 APIs

Scholarly Patents Research Science Open Data

Kin Score

Kin Score How this is scored →
scored 2026-09-08 · rubric v0.20.0

Composite quality — 35.0/100 · thin

Contract Quality 11.7 / 21

Developer Ergonomics 3.6 / 17

Access Clarity 6.3 / 17

Operational Transparency 1.2 / 11

Contract Governance 0.0 / 10

Discoverability 5.8 / 9

Regulatory Posture 5.6 / 15

Agent readiness — 20/100 · agent aware

Machine-Readable Contract 18 / 18

Agentic Access Contract 10 / 10

Documented Reversibility 0 / 6

MCP Server 0 / 12

Machine-Readable Auth 10 / 10

Idempotency 0 / 9

Stable Error Semantics 0 / 8

Request/Response Examples 0 / 7

Rate-Limit Signaling 7 / 7

Typed Event Surface 0 / 6

Agent Skills 0 / 5

Well-Known Catalog 0 / 4

Consent & Bot Identity 0 / 3

A2A Agent Card 0 / 8

Dry-Run / Simulate Mode 0 / 4

Delegated User Identity 0 / 6

Protected Resource Metadata 0 / 5

Registration Without a Human 0 / 6

Agentic Commerce Well-Known Document 0 / 5

Regulatory Posture applies to this provider. Its tags matched the Education & Research regime, so Regulatory Posture carries 15 points of the composite. If this regime is wrong for your business, say so on your provider repo — the applicability map is public and we will correct it.

Create-or-Update Ergonomics does not apply to this provider. The published contracts declare no write operations, and a read-only API cannot create-or-update. The facet is excluded from this provider's denominator entirely — not scored zero. A reference or data API is not deficient for being unable to upsert.

The six quality facets above are damped to 85 points between them, because the conditional facet above carries the other 15. That is why each facet's contribution is shown against a damped maximum: raising a quality facet moves the composite by 85% of its nominal weight, not 100%. The full arithmetic is at apis.io/rating/.

Improve this rating by publishing the missing artifacts — every area above can be raised, and the full rubric is at apis.io/rating/. Every facet and dimension name above is a link: it opens that measurement's own page — what it means, the exact checks that feed it, how the whole catalog distributes on it, and the providers at the top of it. This rating is computed from github.com/api-evangelist/lens: open an issue to ask a question, or submit a pull request to add artifacts. Submit an artifact on GitHub — free → Manage your own listing — the Influence plan, $499/mo →

APIs 2

Individual APIs this provider publishes, each with its own machine-readable definition.

Lens Patents API

Search and retrieve global patent records.

Lens Scholarly API

Search and retrieve scholarly works.

Open Collections 4

Open, tool-agnostic API collections (OpenAPI-derived and Bruno).

API Collection

OPEN COLLECTION

Lens Patents API

OPEN COLLECTION

Lens Patents Scholarly API

OPEN COLLECTION

Lens API

OPEN COLLECTION

Pricing Plans 1

Published pricing tiers and plan structures.

Lens Plans Pricing

3 plans

PLANS

Rate Limits 1

Documented rate limits and quota policies.

Lens Rate Limits

5 limits

RATE LIMITS

FinOps 1

Cost, billing, and metering signals for API financial operations.

Lens Finops

FINOPS

Security Posture 2

Authentication, domain security, vulnerability disclosure, and trust-center signals.

Lens Authentication

http · 1 scheme

SECURITY

Lens Domain Security

TLSv1.2 · HSTS · DMARC

SECURITY

Agentic Access 1

Recommended x-agentic-access execution contracts for AI agents.

Lens Agentic Access

6 operations · 2 acting

AGENTIC

Resources

Documentation 1

Reference material describing how the API behaves

Documentation

Documentation

Agent Surfaces 1

MCP servers, agent skills, and machine-readable catalogs

AgenticAccess

AgenticAccess

Build 1

SDKs, sample code, and the tooling you integrate with

GitHubOrganization

GitHubOrganization

Access & Security 2

Authentication, authorization, and security posture

DomainSecurity

DomainSecurity

Authentication

Authentication

Commercial 3

Pricing, plans, and the legal terms of use

Plans

Plans

TermsOfService

TermsOfService

PrivacyPolicy

PrivacyPolicy

Company 3

The organization behind the API

LinkedIn

Website

Website

About

About

Source (apis.yml)

aid: lens
name: Lens
description: Lens is an open knowledge platform from Cambia that aggregates global scholarly works and patent records and
  exposes them through a REST API. The versioned API supports rich Elasticsearch-style queries, cursor pagination, and field
  projection across the full Lens scholarly and patent corpora, enabling research, science policy, technology landscape, and
  patent intelligence applications.
type: Index
deliveryModel:
  model: saas
  open_source: false
  commercial: true
  callable_host: true
  label: Hosted service · you call their endpoint
  confidence: high
  source:
  - openapi
  - pricing
  generated: '2026-08-28'
  method: derived
accessModel:
  pricing: freemium
  onboarding: self-serve
  trial: false
  try_now: true
  public: false
  label: Freemium · Self-serve signup
  confidence: medium
  source:
  - plans
  - authentication
  - security
  generated: '2026-09-03'
  method: derived
position: Consuming
access: 3rd-Party
image: https://kinlane-images.s3.amazonaws.com/shared/apis-json/icons/lens.png
tags:
- Scholarly
- Patents
- Research
- Science
- Open Data
url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/lens/refs/heads/main/apis.yml
created: '2025-02-06'
modified: '2026-05-19'
specificationVersion: '0.23'
apis:
- aid: lens:lens-patents-api
  name: Lens Patents API
  description: Search and retrieve global patent records.
  humanURL: https://docs.api.lens.org/
  baseURL: https://api.lens.org
  tags:
  - Patents
  properties:
  - type: OpenAPI
    url: openapi/lens-patents-api-openapi.yml
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://docs.api.lens.org/
  - type: SwaggerUI
    url: https://api.lens.org/swagger-ui.html
- aid: lens:lens-scholarly-api
  name: Lens Scholarly API
  description: Search and retrieve scholarly works.
  humanURL: https://docs.api.lens.org/
  baseURL: https://api.lens.org
  tags:
  - Scholarly
  properties:
  - type: OpenAPI
    url: openapi/lens-scholarly-api-openapi.yml
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://docs.api.lens.org/
  - type: SwaggerUI
    url: https://api.lens.org/swagger-ui.html
common:
- type: AgenticAccess
  url: agentic-access/lens-agentic-access.yml
- type: DomainSecurity
  url: security/lens-domain-security.yml
- type: Authentication
  url: authentication/lens-authentication.yml
- type: GitHubOrganization
  url: https://github.com/lensapp
- type: LinkedIn
  url: https://www.linkedin.com/company/k8slens
- url: https://www.lens.org/
  type: Website
- url: https://docs.api.lens.org/
  type: Documentation
- url: https://www.lens.org/lens/user/subscriptions
  type: Plans
- url: https://www.lens.org/lens/about
  type: About
- url: https://www.lens.org/lens/terms-and-conditions
  type: TermsOfService
- url: https://www.lens.org/lens/privacy-policy
  type: PrivacyPolicy
maintainers:
- FN: Kin Lane
  email: kin@apievangelist.com

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