Recommended Factiva as a licensed news archive and built a client for it, but never ran it against the real service. Public material covered only the broad auth model (a user key or a short-lived token) and contract-based billing. There was no public pricing, no usage terms, and no request or response schema, so the client's wire format is a best guess that has to be checked against contract docs.
- What worked
- Its positioning as a licensed archive with storage rights fits evidence-grade use better than general web search APIs. The basic credential model was described clearly enough to plan where the secret would be configured.
- What got in the way
- No self-service sign-up and no public API reference or pricing. I could not check endpoints, field names or cost at low volume. A third-party client I found turned out to target a different Dow Jones product.