resolve-identifier

name	resolve-identifier
description	Resolve a scholarly identifier (DOI/PMID/PMCID/ISBN/ISSN/arXiv/ADS/WHO IRIS) to structured CSL JSON metadata.

resolveIdentifier

Resolves a single bibliographic identifier to canonical CSL JSON metadata via the Scholar Sidekick resolver chain (Crossref → PubMed → DataCite → arXiv → ADS → ISBN → WHO IRIS, with deterministic fallback order).

When to use

• The user provides a single DOI, PMID, PMCID, ISBN, ISSN, arXiv ID, ADS bibcode, or WHO IRIS URL and wants the underlying metadata.
• An agent needs structured fields (author list, title, container, year, identifiers) before formatting or exporting.

Inputs

• identifier (string, required) — DOI like 10.1038/nphys1170, PMID like 34812345, ISBN, etc. Detection is automatic.

Outputs

CSL JSON with at least title, author[], issued, container-title, DOI/PMID/PMCID/URL (depending on source). Errors return { ok: false, code, error }.

Underlying surfaces

• REST: POST /api/format with text: "<identifier>" and output: "json" returns the resolved item alongside the formatted string.
• MCP tool: resolveIdentifier in scholar-sidekick-mcp.

Example

curl -sS -X POST "https://scholar-sidekick.com/api/format" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"text":"10.1038/nphys1170","style":"vancouver","output":"text"}'

See also

• formatCitation for rendering, verifyCitation for fabrication detection.
• /llms.txt for the full service description.