Fatcat
The Internet Archive's open catalog of scholarship — the editable backbone under IA Scholar.
At a Glance
- Publisher
- Internet Archive
- Coverage
An open, versioned, editable catalog of scholarly works and their preserved full-text copies, underpinning Internet Archive Scholar (verify current counts).
- Access
Free and open; wiki-style editing, API, and bulk data.
- Free alternative
- It is free; Crossref, OpenAlex for metadata.
- Regional
Global, long-tail focus.
Our Take
Fatcat is the infrastructure beneath Internet Archive Scholar — an open, Wikipedia-style catalog of scholarly works that tracks where a preserved full-text copy lives, with full version history and an API. It’s aimed at builders and preservationists more than everyday searchers: if you need an editable, openly-licensed bibliographic dataset that emphasizes preservation and the long tail, Fatcat is unusual and useful. For reading, you’d normally use IA Scholar on top of it. Use Fatcat as an open data source and to correct or trace preservation records; it’s upstream infrastructure, not a reading interface.
Power Tips
- Use the API and bulk data for open, preservation-aware bibliographic analysis.
- Trace whether and where a work has a preserved full-text copy.
- Edit or flag records wiki-style to improve the open catalog.
Alternatives & Complements
Internet Archive Scholar, Crossref, OpenAlex, CORE
Figures last verified: June 15, 2026