DOAJ Open Access Journals Scraper

Extract comprehensive metadata for 23,000+ peer-reviewed open-access journals from the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) — the world's largest curated list of vetted, open-access scholarly journals. This Actor provides seamless access to journal titles, publishers, ISSN identifiers, subject classifications, article processing charge (APC) information, and homepage URLs via the free DOAJ API.

DOAJ is maintained by a global community and includes journals in every academic discipline, from medicine and biology to social sciences and humanities. All journals are independently quality-reviewed and freely available online. This Actor is ideal for academic research, library acquisition workflows, publisher intelligence, and open science initiatives.

Key Features

• Complete DOAJ catalog access — 23,000+ peer-reviewed open-access journals in a single Actor run
• Free API — No authentication required, no rate limits, no API keys
• Search filtering — Use DOAJ's query syntax to filter journals by title, subject, keywords, publisher, or ISSN
• Full pagination support — Automatically paginate through results, configurable result limits
• Rich metadata extraction — Titles, publishers, ISSN numbers, subjects, keywords, languages, APC status, and homepage URLs
• Batch-optimized output — Clean JSON ready for library systems, publisher databases, academic research, or RAG pipelines
• Default fallback — Run with empty input to fetch all journals (subject to maxResults limit)

Output Data Fields

Field	Type	Description
id	string	DOAJ journal identifier
title	string	Journal title
alternativeTitle	string	Alternative or translated journal title (if available)
publisher	string	Publisher name
publisherCountry	string	ISO country code of publisher
pissn	string	Print ISSN (if available)
eissn	string	Electronic ISSN
subjects	string	Subject classifications (comma-separated)
keywords	string	Journal keywords (comma-separated)
languages	string	Languages published (comma-separated)
homepage	string	Journal homepage URL
hasAPC	boolean	Whether the journal charges article processing fees (APC)
apcMaxPrice	string	Maximum APC amount (if applicable)
apcCurrency	string	Currency of APC pricing
oaStart	integer	Year the journal started open access publication
licenseType	string	Primary license type (e.g., CC-BY, CC-BY-NC, etc.)
reviewProcess	string	Peer review process type (comma-separated)
lastUpdated	string	Last update timestamp from DOAJ

How to Scrape DOAJ Journal Data

1. Navigate to the DOAJ Open Access Journals Scraper Actor page on Apify Store.
2. Click Start to open the input configuration form.
3. (Optional) Enter a Search Query to filter journals:
   • Leave blank or use * for all journals
   • Examples: medicine, cancer, bibjson.title:health, bibjson.keywords:AI
4. (Optional) Set Max Results to control output size (default: 1000, set to 0 for unlimited).
5. Click Start to run the Actor.
6. Download results as JSON, CSV, or Excel from the Dataset tab.
7. Integrate results into your library system, publisher database, or research workflow.

Input Example

{
    "query": "medicine",
    "maxResults": 500
}

To fetch all journals (respecting maxResults):

{
    "query": "*",
    "maxResults": 0
}

Output Example

{
    "id": "7e9fe18d6e1b49c9a2e8d1f5b6c2e9a3",
    "title": "PLOS Medicine",
    "alternativeTitle": "",
    "publisher": "Public Library of Science (PLOS)",
    "publisherCountry": "US",
    "pissn": "1549-1676",
    "eissn": "1549-1676",
    "subjects": "Medicine, Health professions",
    "keywords": "medicine, health, diseases",
    "languages": "English",
    "homepage": "https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/",
    "hasAPC": true,
    "apcMaxPrice": "2450",
    "apcCurrency": "USD",
    "oaStart": 2004,
    "licenseType": "CC-BY",
    "reviewProcess": "Double blind peer review",
    "lastUpdated": "2026-01-15T10:32:45Z"
}

Pricing

This Actor fetches data from a free, public DOAJ API with no authentication or proxy costs.

• Cost per run: ~$0.0005 (API calls only, no browser required)
• Actor start event: Default platform rate
• Per-result pricing: $0.003/result

Typical run time is 10-60 seconds depending on the number of results requested.

Use Cases

• Library acquisition workflows — Identify open-access journals in your subject areas for collection development
• Publisher intelligence — Monitor competitors' open-access journal portfolios and APC pricing
• Academic research — Analyze trends in open-access publishing by subject, geography, or APC policy
• Open science initiatives — Build comprehensive datasets of freely available peer-reviewed journals
• Journal discovery — Help researchers find quality open-access venues for manuscript submission
• Metadata enrichment — Augment your journal database with DOAJ's curated, peer-reviewed catalog
• RAG pipeline ingestion — Clean structured output ready for LLM-based academic research analysis

DOAJ Query Syntax (Advanced)

The query parameter supports DOAJ's Lucene-like search syntax:

• * — All journals (default)
• medicine — Keywords partial match across all fields
• bibjson.title:health — Filter by title containing "health"
• bibjson.keywords:AI — Filter by keywords containing "AI"
• bibjson.publisher.name:Springer — Filter by publisher
• bibjson.pissn:2214-5095 — Filter by PISSN
• bibjson.eissn:2214-5095 — Filter by EISSN
• Multiple terms: bibjson.title:cancer AND bibjson.publisher.country:US

See DOAJ API documentation for the complete query syntax reference.

FAQ

Q: Can I search for specific journals by ISSN? A: Yes. Use bibjson.pissn:XXXX-XXXX or bibjson.eissn:XXXX-XXXX to find journals by their ISSN.

Q: Are results limited to English-language journals? A: No. DOAJ includes journals published in many languages. The languages field in output shows which languages each journal publishes.

Q: What's the maximum number of results I can retrieve? A: The API supports up to 25,000 results. Set maxResults to 0 for unlimited or adjust as needed.

Q: Can I get journals by subject area? A: Yes. Use the subjects field in output to filter results, or query by discipline (e.g., medicine, computer science).

Q: Are there any rate limits? A: DOAJ's public API has no rate limits. You can run this Actor as many times as needed without restrictions.

Q: What does "APC" mean? A: APC (Article Processing Charge) is a fee some open-access journals charge authors to publish articles. The hasAPC field indicates whether a journal charges fees.

Legal Disclaimer

This Actor accesses publicly available data from the DOAJ (Directory of Open Access Journals) API, which is maintained as a free public service. All data is provided under DOAJ's terms of use. Respect the intellectual property rights of journal publishers and authors. Use extracted data only for legitimate academic, research, or commercial purposes in compliance with local laws and the journals' terms of service.

DOAJ is a community-curated resource supported by a diverse editorial team. Consider contributing to DOAJ if your institution benefits from its services.

Support

For issues, feature requests, or questions about this Actor, please contact the developer or file an issue on the Actor's repository.