Programmatic Access to ICTV Data

Accessing Taxonomic Data via an Application Programming Interface (API)

The ICTV has collaborated with the EVORA project (European Viral Outbreak Response Alliance) to develop a public programmatic access to the virus taxonomy through the transformation of the data into a virus taxonomy ontology and serving it through the EVORA Ontology Lookup Service (OLS) API. Documentation on how to access and use the API is available at https://evora-project.github.io/ictv-ontology/helpers/.

To learn more about development of this ontology and API, see our publication:

Lieutaud P, McLaughlin J, Hendrickson RC, David R, Parkinson H, Lefkowitz EJ, Dempsey DM, Coutard B. Programmatic access to ICTV virus taxonomy through a public ontology API. Gigascience. 2026 Sep 4:giag089. doi: 10.1093/gigascience/giag089. Epub ahead of print. PMID: 42695975.

International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses

Unless otherwise noted, this work is licensed under the CC BY 4.0,
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License

Support is provided by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases,
U.S. National Institutes of Health, Awards U24AI162625 and R24AI201148