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Data repositoryDataverse Search API

Harvard Dataverse

Harvard Dataverse is a research data repository hosted at Harvard University and open to researchers in any field, with many social science replication datasets. Through ScholarMuse, an agent searches its published datasets by keyword and gets the DOI or persistent ID, authors, publication date, the collection it sits in, subjects, file count and version.

ScholarMuse tools: search_datasets. Each successful call uses credits.

Use in my agentWeb tool: Dataset finder

The web tool runs without an account, up to 5 runs a day per visitor.

Ask your agent

Find Harvard Dataverse datasets on voter turnout in US congressional elections and the collection each belongs to.
Is there replication data on minimum wage and employment in Harvard Dataverse? Give DOIs and authors.
Which Harvard Dataverse datasets cover household surveys in Kenya? List subjects, file count and version.

What your agent gets back

Every record carries id, source, title, url, license, attribution and retrievedAt. The fields below are the data that comes from Harvard Dataverse.

search_datasets

The Dataverse search API does not give the dataset licence, so license is empty unless another source in the same call returned the same DOI.

doi
Dataset DOI, lower case
creators
Creator names, up to 10
year
Publication year
persistentId
Global ID when it is not a DOI
date
Publication date (YYYY-MM-DD)
collection
Name of the dataverse collection
description
Dataset description, tags removed
fileCount
Number of files in the dataset
subjects
Subject categories, up to 6
version
Version as major.minor
alsoIn
Other sources that returned the same dataset

What it covers

  • Published datasets in the Harvard Dataverse installation at dataverse.harvard.edu.
  • Other Dataverse installations run by other institutions are not searched.
  • Each record links to the dataset's page, where files and terms of use are shown.

Limits

  • One call returns at most 25 datasets (default 10). When several repositories are searched together, that number is shared between them, so name Harvard Dataverse alone to fill it.
  • The only search input is a keyword query. There are no year, licence, author or file-type filters; the agent has to read those fields in the results.
  • The dataset's licence or terms, its size and its file names are not returned; check the dataset page before reuse.
  • Only datasets are searched, not individual files or collections. An upstream request is abandoned after 30 seconds.

How ScholarMuse reaches Harvard Dataverse

The connector calls dataverse.harvard.edu/api/search with no API token, restricted to type dataset.

Responses are cached for up to 6 hours, so a dataset published at Harvard Dataverse in the last few hours may not appear yet.

API key: the upstream API can be called without one, so you do not add one.

Licence and attribution

Licence: CC0-1.0 (metadata)

Metadata from Harvard Dataverse (dataverse.harvard.edu). Each dataset carries its own licence or terms.

Records that come from Harvard Dataverse carry this licence and attribution. When you cite the data in a paper, follow Harvard Dataverse's own citation guidance.

Capabilities that use Harvard Dataverse

Find datasets

Find datasets

All disciplines · DataCite, Zenodo, Dryad +2

Related sources

DataCiteZenodoDryadHugging Face Datasets

FAQ

ScholarMuse is not an official Harvard Dataverse product. It is one MCP server for academic data, and its search_datasets tool queries Harvard Dataverse. An agent connected to ScholarMuse can use Harvard Dataverse without a separate server.

No. The Harvard Dataverse API can be called without a key, and ScholarMuse does not ask you for one. You sign in to ScholarMuse once and your agent calls the tool.

The connector calls dataverse.harvard.edu/api/search with no API token, restricted to type dataset. Responses are cached for up to 6 hours, so a dataset published at Harvard Dataverse in the last few hours may not appear yet.

CC0-1.0 (metadata). Attribution: Metadata from Harvard Dataverse (dataverse.harvard.edu). Each dataset carries its own licence or terms. Records that come from Harvard Dataverse carry this licence and attribution.

Yes. Each successful call to search_datasets uses credits, and a call that fails is not charged. Current price: Find datasets, 1 credit / call.