Cochrane Review Scraper

Search Cochrane systematic reviews via the Europe PMC API. Returns structured data including title, authors, DOI, publication date, review type, and the authors' conclusions extracted from the abstract.

Features

• Full-text search across all Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews entries
• Filter by review type: systematic reviews or protocols
• Extracts the Authors' conclusions section automatically
• Cursor-based pagination — retrieves up to 10,000 results
• Rate-limited and retry-safe

Input

Field	Type	Required	Default	Description
searchTerm	string	✅	—	Topic to search, e.g. statins heart failure
reviewType	string		all	all, systematic, or protocol
maxResults	integer		50	Max reviews to retrieve (1–10,000)

Output

Each record in the dataset:

{
  "title": "Statins for the prevention of dementia",
  "authors": "McGuinness B, Craig D, Bullock R, Passmore P",
  "doi": "10.1002/14651858.CD003160.pub3",
  "publicationDate": "2016-01-04",
  "reviewType": "systematic",
  "conclusion": "Current evidence does not support the use of statins in the prevention of dementia or cognitive impairment in people at risk of vascular disease.",
  "url": "https://doi.org/10.1002/14651858.CD003160.pub3"
}

Use Cases

1. Evidence Synthesis for Clinical Guidelines

A hospital's evidence team searches antibiotic prophylaxis orthopedic surgery and exports all Cochrane reviews with conclusions to a spreadsheet — used as the basis for updating internal protocols.

2. Academic Literature Review

A PhD student preparing a systematic review on cognitive behavioural therapy depression retrieves all Cochrane protocols and reviews to identify existing evidence gaps and avoid duplication of effort.

3. Drug Efficacy Monitoring

A pharmaceutical analyst regularly scrapes Cochrane for reviews mentioning a drug class (e.g., GLP-1 receptor agonist obesity) to track emerging evidence — feeding directly into regulatory submissions.

API Source

Data is retrieved from Europe PMC (JOURNAL:"Cochrane Database Syst Rev"), which indexes all Cochrane reviews with full structured metadata.

Pricing

Pay-per-result on Apify. Typical run: 50 reviews ≈ $0.25.