ROR Research Organization Registry Scraper

Extract structured data from the Research Organization Registry (ROR) — the authoritative global registry of 124,000+ research institutions, universities, hospitals, and research centers maintained by the Community Organizations for Research Excellence (CORE) and supported by major research institutions worldwide.

This Actor provides complete access to ROR's free, open API with powerful filtering by organization type, country, and full-text search. Output includes geographic coordinates, external identifiers (GRID, ISNI, Wikidata), and relationship metadata — clean JSON ready for research databases, institutional networks, or academic analysis pipelines.

Key Features

• Complete ROR coverage — 124,000+ research institutions from 185+ countries
• Full-text search — Find organizations by name, keyword, or acronym (e.g., "Harvard", "MIT", "Max Planck")
• Country filtering — Filter by country name or 2-letter ISO code (e.g., "United States", "DE", "JP")
• Organization type filtering — Isolate specific sectors: Education, Healthcare, Company, Government, Nonprofit, Facility, Archive
• Geographic data — City, latitude, longitude, and country code for mapping and geospatial analysis
• External identifiers — GRID, ISNI, FundRef, and Wikidata IDs for cross-referencing with other databases
• Relationship counts — Number of affiliated organizations for network analysis
• Establishment year — Historical founding data for institutional analysis
• No authentication required — Free public ROR API, no keys or credentials needed
• Batch-optimized output — Clean JSON ready for RAG pipelines, research databases, or institutional networks

Output Data Fields

Field	Type	Description
id	string	ROR persistent identifier (e.g., https://ror.org/01a9mp70)
name	string	Official organization name
types	string	Organization type(s), comma-separated (e.g., "Education, Nonprofit")
established	integer	Year the organization was founded (null if unknown)
status	string	Current status (e.g., "active", "inactive")
countryCode	string	ISO 2-letter country code (e.g., "US", "GB", "DE")
countryName	string	Full country name (e.g., "United States", "Germany")
city	string	Primary city location
latitude	number	Latitude coordinate for mapping
longitude	number	Longitude coordinate for mapping
homepage	string	Official website URL
aliases	string	Alternative names used by the organization, comma-separated
acronyms	string	Known acronyms, comma-separated (e.g., "MIT", "NIH")
wikipediaUrl	string	Wikipedia article URL if available
grid	string	GRID identifier for cross-reference with other databases
isni	string	ISNI (International Standard Name Identifier)
fundref	string	Funder ID from CrossRef's Funder Registry
wikidata	string	Wikidata entity ID (QID)
numRelationships	integer	Count of affiliated organizations or parent/subsidiary relationships

How to Scrape ROR Organizations

1. Navigate to the ROR Research Organization Registry Scraper on Apify Store.
2. Click Start to open the input configuration form.
3. (Optional) Enter a Full-Text Search Query to find specific organizations (e.g., "Harvard Medical School").
4. (Optional) Enter a Country Filter by name or code (e.g., "France" or "FR").
5. (Optional) Enter an Organization Type (e.g., "Education", "Healthcare", "Government").
6. Set Max Results to control output size (default: 1000, set to 0 for unlimited).
7. Click Start to run the Actor.
8. Download results as JSON, CSV, or Excel from the Dataset tab.

Input Examples

Example 1: Universities in the United States

{
    "country": "United States",
    "type": "Education",
    "maxResults": 500
}

Example 2: Search for MIT and related institutions

{
    "query": "MIT",
    "maxResults": 50
}

Example 3: Healthcare organizations in Germany

{
    "country": "DE",
    "type": "Healthcare",
    "maxResults": 200
}

Output Example

{
    "id": "https://ror.org/01a9mp70",
    "name": "Massachusetts Institute of Technology",
    "types": "Education",
    "established": 1861,
    "status": "active",
    "countryCode": "US",
    "countryName": "United States",
    "city": "Cambridge, Massachusetts",
    "latitude": 42.3601,
    "longitude": -71.0589,
    "homepage": "https://www.mit.edu",
    "aliases": "MIT",
    "acronyms": "MIT",
    "wikipediaUrl": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massachusetts_Institute_of_Technology",
    "grid": "grid.4991.5",
    "isni": "0000 0001 2341 6899",
    "fundref": "501100002341",
    "wikidata": "Q49108",
    "numRelationships": 12
}

Pricing

This Actor fetches data from a free public API with efficient pagination. Compute costs are minimal.

• Cost per run: ~$0.001 (minimal API calls)
• Actor start event: Default platform rate
• Per-result pricing: $0.003/result

Typical run time is 10-30 seconds depending on result count and filters.

Use Cases

• Research network mapping — Analyze collaboration networks and institutional relationships
• Academic database enrichment — Cross-reference organizations with GRID, ISNI, Wikidata, and other databases
• Grant research — Identify research institutions by country, type, and funding organization
• Institutional analysis — Map research capacity by geography and sector
• Educational analytics — Build datasets of universities for enrollment, ranking, or program analysis
• Healthcare research — Extract hospital and healthcare institution directories by country
• Government database — Track public research institutions and government research centers
• Institutional affiliations — Validate researcher and author institutional data against authoritative source
• Geospatial research — Use coordinates for mapping research capacity and institutional density
• RAG pipeline ingestion — Clean structured output ready for LLM-based research analysis

Legal & Attribution

• License: ROR data is made available under the Community Data License Agreement (CDLA) 2.0 Sharing
• Attribution: This scraper accesses the free, public ROR API. Data sourced from https://ror.org/
• Terms of Service: Scraping is permitted by ROR's license and API terms of service for research and educational purposes
• Usage rights: The data can be used, shared, and modified for research, educational, and non-profit purposes with attribution

Disclaimer: This Actor scrapes only publicly accessible, non-personal research organization data. Users are responsible for complying with the ROR license terms and their local data usage regulations. This tool is provided for legitimate research and educational purposes.

FAQ

Q: What is ROR? A: The Research Organization Registry (ROR) is a global, community-driven registry of research organizations maintained by CORE, Crossref, and DataCite. It provides persistent, unique identifiers and metadata for 124,000+ research institutions.

Q: Can I search by organization type? A: Yes. The Actor supports filtering by type: Education, Healthcare, Company, Government, Nonprofit, Facility, Archive.

Q: What's the difference between GRID, ISNI, and Wikidata IDs? A: These are different persistent identifier systems used by different research infrastructure platforms. GRID is widely used in academic databases, ISNI is an international standard for names, and Wikidata is a collaborative knowledge base.

Q: Can I get all 124,000+ organizations in one run? A: Yes. Set maxResults to 0 for unlimited results. The Actor will paginate through all available data. This may take 2-5 minutes depending on API response time.

Q: Are coordinates always available? A: Most organizations have coordinates available. If not, the latitude and longitude fields will be empty strings.

Q: What happens if I search with multiple filters? A: The Actor applies all filters together (AND logic). For example, searching for "Education" type in "United States" will return only educational institutions in the US.

Support

For issues, feature requests, or questions about this Actor, please contact the developer or post on Apify Community Forums.