# Academic Papers Search: OpenAlex, Crossref, arXiv, PubMed (`bisketapis/academic-papers-search`) Actor

Search research papers across OpenAlex, Crossref, arXiv and PubMed in one run. Results are deduplicated by DOI, arXiv ID and PMID and merged into one row per paper with citations, open-access PDF links and abstracts. Official open APIs, no Google Scholar scraping.

- **URL**: https://apify.com/bisketapis/academic-papers-search.md
- **Developed by:** [Chris Lucas](https://apify.com/bisketapis) (community)
- **Categories:** Developer tools, Other
- **Security:** Limited permissions
- **Stats:** 2 total users, 1 monthly users, 100.0% runs succeeded, 0 bookmarks
- **User rating**: No ratings yet

## Pricing

$0.50 / 1,000 papers

This Actor is paid per event. You are not charged for the Apify platform usage, but only a fixed price for specific events.

Learn more: https://docs.apify.com/actors/running/actors-in-store.md#pay-per-event

## What's an Apify Actor?

An Actor is a serverless cloud program that runs on the Apify platform. It has two run modes.
In Batch mode, an Actor accepts a well-defined JSON input, performs an action which can take anything from a few seconds to a few hours,
and optionally produces a well-defined JSON output, datasets with results, or files in key-value store.
In Standby mode, an Actor provides a web server which can be used as a website, API, or an MCP server.

Apify vocabulary and the platform model are defined once, in the agent quickstart at https://apify.com/agents.md.

## How to integrate an Actor?

If asked about integration, you help developers integrate Actors into their projects.
You adapt to their stack and deliver integrations that are safe, well-documented, and production-ready.

Do not guess an integration path. Every one of them is in the agent quickstart at https://apify.com/agents.md: the Apify MCP server, Agent Skills with the Apify CLI, the JavaScript and Python clients, the REST API, and the account-free path for an agent with no human to sign in. It also carries the rule on stating cost before the first paid run.

For examples already wired to this Actor's own input schema, see the [API](#api) section below.

Each client library has reference documentation the quickstart does not restate: [JavaScript/TypeScript](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/js/docs.md) (`npm install apify-client`) and [Python](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/python/docs.md) (`pip install apify-client`).

# README

## Academic Papers Search: OpenAlex, Crossref, arXiv and PubMed in one run

Search research papers across **OpenAlex, Crossref, arXiv and PubMed** with one query. Each paper comes back as one flat row with title, authors, year, venue, DOI, arXiv ID, PubMed ID, citation count, open-access PDF link and abstract. A paper found in several sources is merged into a single row, deduplicated by DOI, arXiv ID and PMID, and the row lists which APIs returned it.

It uses the official open APIs, not Google Scholar pages, so there is no CAPTCHA, no blocking and no breakage when Google changes its HTML. A default run (50 papers, all four sources) finishes in about 10 seconds.

### What you get

| Field | Description |
|---|---|
| `title`, `authors` (list of names), `year`, `publishedDate` | Core bibliographic data |
| `venue` | Journal, conference or `arXiv` |
| `doi`, `arxivId`, `pmid` | Identifiers, normalised (lowercase DOI, arXiv ID without version) |
| `citationCount` | Highest count among OpenAlex and Crossref |
| `isOpenAccess`, `pdfUrl` | Free full text flag and link when known (`null` = unknown) |
| `abstract` | Plain-text abstract when any source has one |
| `sources` | Which APIs returned the paper, for example `["openalex","arxiv"]` |
| `url`, `scrapedAt`, `type` | Landing page, UTC timestamp, always `paper` |

#### Sample output

```json
{
  "type": "paper",
  "title": "RAGAs: Automated Evaluation of Retrieval Augmented Generation",
  "authors": ["Shahul Es", "Jithin James", "Luis Espinosa-Anke"],
  "year": 2024,
  "publishedDate": "2024-01-01",
  "venue": "Conference of the European Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics",
  "doi": "10.18653/v1/2024.eacl-demo.16",
  "arxivId": "2309.15217",
  "pmid": null,
  "citationCount": 682,
  "isOpenAccess": true,
  "pdfUrl": "https://aclanthology.org/2024.eacl-demo.16.pdf",
  "abstract": "We introduce Ragas (Retrieval Augmented Generation Assessment), a framework for reference-free evaluation of ...",
  "sources": ["openalex", "arxiv"],
  "url": "https://doi.org/10.18653/v1/2024.eacl-demo.16",
  "scrapedAt": "2026-11-03T20:12:03Z"
}
```

### Input

| Field | Default | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| `query` | `CRISPR base editing` | Keywords or a phrase. Sent to every selected source. |
| `sources` | all four | `openalex`, `crossref`, `arxiv`, `pubmed` |
| `yearFrom`, `yearTo` | none | Publication year range |
| `openAccessOnly` | false | Keep only papers with a known free full text |
| `sort` | `relevance` | `relevance` (blended, multi-source hits first), `citations`, `date` |
| `maxItems` | 50 | Max papers returned (1 to 2000). You pay per paper. |
| `onlyNew` | false | Skip papers returned by an earlier run with the same query, sources, years and open-access setting. Schedule the actor to get new-paper alerts. |
| `openAlexApiKey` | none | Optional free key from openalex.org/settings/api |
| `proxyConfiguration` | none | Optional. Not needed for these open APIs. |

```json
{"query": "retrieval augmented generation", "sources": ["openalex", "arxiv"], "yearFrom": 2022, "sort": "citations", "maxItems": 100}
```

### Pricing

Pay per event: **$0.0005 per paper** (about **$0.50 per 1,000 papers**). Rows that are not returned (failed sources, duplicates, filtered out, already seen) are never charged. Apify platform usage for a run this size is a fraction of a cent.

### Use cases

- Literature reviews and reading lists across fields, from one query
- New-paper alerts: schedule a run with `onlyNew` and a webhook or email integration
- Citation-ranked shortlists of a topic (`sort: citations`)
- Feeding abstracts and open-access PDF links into RAG and summarisation pipelines
- Building datasets of papers by year, venue or source

### FAQ

**Is this a Google Scholar scraper?** No. It queries OpenAlex, Crossref, arXiv and PubMed directly. Coverage is broad but not identical to Google Scholar (for example, no patents, court opinions or Scholar's "cited by" crawl).

**How are duplicates handled?** Papers are matched by DOI, arXiv ID and PMID, with a long normalised-title fallback for preprint and journal versions without a shared ID. Fields are merged: longest abstract, highest citation count, any known PDF link.

**Why is `citationCount` sometimes `0` or `null`?** arXiv and PubMed do not provide citations. Counts come from OpenAlex and Crossref, and differ between them and from Google Scholar.

**Why do some rows lack an abstract?** Crossref often has none and some publishers do not release abstracts to OpenAlex. Rows found by PubMed or arXiv usually have one.

**What does `sort: citations` rank?** The merged results of the per-source top matches, sorted by citation count. It is the most cited among the best matches, not a global most-cited list.

### Limits

- Each source is asked for `maxItems` best matches, then merged. Crossref relevance can be noisy for short queries.
- arXiv allows one request every 3 seconds; large `maxItems` on arXiv take proportionally longer. Each source is capped at 1,000 results per run.
- OpenAlex without an API key shares a small daily budget per IP address. If OpenAlex rows go missing, the run summary (key `OUTPUT`) shows the source as failed; add a free OpenAlex key.
- `isOpenAccess: null` means unknown, not closed.
- Only public bibliographic metadata is returned.

# Actor input Schema

## `query` (type: `string`):

Keywords or a phrase, for example: graph neural networks drug discovery. The same query is sent to every selected source.

## `sources` (type: `array`):

Which open APIs to query. Papers found in several sources are merged into one row.

## `yearFrom` (type: `integer`):

Earliest publication year. Leave empty for no limit.

## `yearTo` (type: `integer`):

Latest publication year. Leave empty for no limit.

## `openAccessOnly` (type: `boolean`):

Return only papers with a known free full text (arXiv, PubMed Central, OpenAlex open-access flag).

## `sort` (type: `string`):

Relevance blends each source's ranking; papers found by several sources rank higher. Citations use OpenAlex and Crossref counts.

## `maxItems` (type: `integer`):

Upper limit of papers returned (you are charged per paper). Each source is asked for this many before merging.

## `onlyNew` (type: `boolean`):

Skip papers already returned by an earlier run with the same query, sources, years and open-access setting. Schedule the actor to get new-paper alerts. Remembered in a store named academic-papers-seen.

## `openAlexApiKey` (type: `string`):

Free key from openalex.org/settings/api. Without one, OpenAlex shares a small daily budget per IP address; add a key if OpenAlex rows are missing on busy days.

## `proxyConfiguration` (type: `object`):

Not needed: the sources are open APIs. Leave empty unless you want requests to leave from an Apify proxy.

## Actor input object example

```json
{
  "query": "CRISPR base editing",
  "sources": [
    "openalex",
    "crossref",
    "arxiv",
    "pubmed"
  ],
  "openAccessOnly": false,
  "sort": "relevance",
  "maxItems": 50,
  "onlyNew": false
}
```

# Actor output Schema

## `results` (type: `string`):

One row per unique paper.

## `runSummary` (type: `string`):

Per-source status and counts, http stats.

# API

You can run this Actor programmatically using our API. Below are code examples in JavaScript, Python, and CLI, as well as the OpenAPI specification and MCP server setup.

## JavaScript example

```javascript
import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

// Initialize the ApifyClient with your Apify API token
// Replace the '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>' with your token
const client = new ApifyClient({
    token: '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>',
});

// Prepare Actor input
const input = {
    "query": "CRISPR base editing",
    "sources": [
        "openalex",
        "crossref",
        "arxiv",
        "pubmed"
    ],
    "maxItems": 50
};

// Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
const run = await client.actor("bisketapis/academic-papers-search").call(input);

// Fetch and print Actor results from the run's dataset (if any)
console.log('Results from dataset');
console.log(`💾 Check your data here: https://console.apify.com/storage/datasets/${run.defaultDatasetId}`);
const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
items.forEach((item) => {
    console.dir(item);
});

// 📚 Want to learn more 📖? Go to → https://docs.apify.com/api/client/js/docs

```

## Python example

```python
from apify_client import ApifyClient

# Initialize the ApifyClient with your Apify API token
# Replace '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>' with your token.
client = ApifyClient("<YOUR_API_TOKEN>")

# Prepare the Actor input
run_input = {
    "query": "CRISPR base editing",
    "sources": [
        "openalex",
        "crossref",
        "arxiv",
        "pubmed",
    ],
    "maxItems": 50,
}

# Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
run = client.actor("bisketapis/academic-papers-search").call(run_input=run_input)

# Fetch and print Actor results from the run's dataset (if there are any)
print(f"💾 Check your data here: https://console.apify.com/storage/datasets/{run.default_dataset_id}")
for item in client.dataset(run.default_dataset_id).iterate_items():
    print(item)

# 📚 Want to learn more 📖? Go to → https://docs.apify.com/api/client/python/docs/quick-start

```

## CLI example

```bash
echo '{
  "query": "CRISPR base editing",
  "sources": [
    "openalex",
    "crossref",
    "arxiv",
    "pubmed"
  ],
  "maxItems": 50
}' |
apify call bisketapis/academic-papers-search --silent --output-dataset

```

## MCP server setup

```json
{
    "mcpServers": {
        "apify": {
            "type": "http",
            "url": "https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=fetch-actor-details,bisketapis/academic-papers-search"
        }
    }
}
```

The hosted server signs you in with OAuth on first connect, so no API token belongs in this config. Clients without OAuth support can send an `Authorization: Bearer <APIFY_API_TOKEN>` header instead, using a token from API & Integrations in Apify Console (https://console.apify.com/settings/integrations).

## OpenAPI specification

Download the OpenAPI definition: https://api.apify.com/v2/actors/U7Y7DajKEIspYRuHU/builds/2a5c0MMCPR3zd8k16/openapi.json