ROR API affiliation search issue

[John Tsai]

Hi,

We are trying to integrate ROR API affiliation search with our customer affiliation matching processes. One issue we are currently running into is getting inconsistant result as the UI search. For example when searching "Eureka Aerospace Corporation" on https://ror.org/, "Eureka Aerospace (United States)" (https://ror.org/00q9x4d93) is returned as the top organization. However, when searching the same organization against ROR API (https://api.ror.org/v2/organizations?affiliation=Eureka%20Aerospace%20Corporation), "The Aerospace Corporation" (https://ror.org/01ar9e455) is returned as the top match with `"chosen": true`. We tried falling back to the default "multi_search" by removing "single_search" from the request parameters. But still the same org https://ror.org/01ar9e455 was returned at the top, with none of the organizations returned being marked as `"chosen": true`. 
It would be greatly appretiated if anyone has insight to share on why the difference in behavior between UI search and API search, and how we can leverge the API to get better match result.

Thanks,

John  pace Corporation.

[Amanda French]

Hi John,

Thanks for writing in! Good to hear that you're incorporating ROR. The ROR UI search uses the ?query parameter of the ROR API, not the ?affiliation parameter. See these pages in our documentation to learn more about the difference: 

- https://ror.readme.io/docs/web-search 
- https://ror.readme.io/docs/api-query 

- https://ror.readme.io/docs/api-affiliation 

Basically, the ?query parameter, which runs the ROR web search UI, expects input that is a simple search for the name of an organization, while the ?affiliation parameter expects long and messy input strings that include extra information like locations, street addresses, punctuation, and organization subunits. If most of the affiliations you're getting from your customers are organization names like "Eureka Aerospace Corporation", you might get better results by using the ?query parameter of the ROR API.  

Does that help? 

Cheers,

Amanda

[Amanda French]

I should add that using the ?query parameter does require a human in the loop who can choose the desired result, so that might not suit your purposes if you're trying to do automated matching of text strings to ROR IDs. Is that what you're building? But in any case, I hope it's clear why the UI search produces a different list of results than the affiliation matching service does.