CORE Open Research Scraper

Search millions of open-access research papers from CORE — the world's largest aggregator of open access scholarly research, covering 220M+ research outputs from thousands of repositories worldwide. Search by topic, author name, or institution, or browse recently published papers. No API key required for basic use.

What this actor does

• Four modes: searchPapers, searchByAuthor, searchByInstitution, getRecentPapers
• Full-text search: across 220M+ open access research papers
• Author search: find all papers by a specific researcher
• Institution search: browse research output from universities and research centers
• Recent papers: browse the latest open access publications
• Year filters: optional yearFrom / yearTo to narrow results
• Empty fields are omitted — no nulls in output

Modes

Mode	Description
searchPapers	Full-text keyword search across all papers (default)
searchByAuthor	Search papers by author name
searchByInstitution	Search papers from a specific university or research center
getRecentPapers	Browse recently published open access papers

Input

Field	Type	Description
mode	select	Which mode to use (default: searchPapers)
searchQuery	string	Keyword or topic to search (default prefill: machine learning)
authorName	string	Author name for searchByAuthor mode (e.g. Alan Turing)
institution	string	Institution name for searchByInstitution mode (e.g. MIT, Oxford)
yearFrom	integer	Filter papers published from this year (optional)
yearTo	integer	Filter papers published up to this year (optional)
apiKey	string	Optional CORE API key to increase rate limits
maxItems	integer	Maximum papers to return, 1–200 (default: 50)

Output per paper

Field	Type	Description
coreId	integer	CORE unique paper identifier
title	string	Paper title
abstract	string	Paper abstract (up to 5000 chars)
authors	array	List of author names
year	integer	Publication year
downloadUrl	string	Direct URL to open access PDF
oaiPmhId	string	OAI-PMH repository identifier
doi	string	Digital Object Identifier
publisher	string	Publisher name
journals	array	Journal titles where published
repositoryDocument	object	Source repository name and URL
scrapedAt	string	ISO 8601 timestamp of when the record was scraped

Data source

CORE is operated by The Open University (UK) and is the world's largest aggregator of open access research, covering 220M+ research outputs from 10,000+ repositories. The CORE API v3 is freely accessible without registration for basic queries (limited to 10 items/page). Register for a free API key at core.ac.uk/services/api to increase limits.

Example output

{
  "coreId": 8848131,
  "title": "Deep Learning for Natural Language Processing",
  "abstract": "This paper surveys deep learning methods for NLP tasks including text classification, named entity recognition, and machine translation...",
  "authors": ["Smith, John", "Doe, Jane"],
  "year": 2021,
  "downloadUrl": "https://core.ac.uk/download/8848131.pdf",
  "oaiPmhId": "oai:example.org:8848131",
  "doi": "10.1234/nlp.2021",
  "publisher": "Springer",
  "journals": ["Journal of AI Research"],
  "repositoryDocument": {
    "repositoryName": "arXiv",
    "repositoryUrl": "https://api.core.ac.uk/v3/data-providers/1"
  },
  "scrapedAt": "2026-06-03T10:00:00+00:00"
}

FAQs

Do I need an API key? No. CORE works without an API key for basic queries (up to 10 results per page with rate limiting). Register free at core.ac.uk/services/api to get a key that increases limits significantly.

How many papers are available? CORE indexes 220M+ open access research outputs from over 10,000 repositories worldwide, including arXiv, PubMed Central, institutional repositories, and more.

Can I download the PDFs? Each record includes a downloadUrl linking to the open access PDF on CORE's servers. PDF availability depends on the source repository.

What languages are papers in? CORE aggregates research in all languages. Use specific keywords or add language terms to your query to filter.

What is oaiPmhId? The OAI-PMH (Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting) identifier uniquely identifies the paper in its source repository. This is what CORE uses to harvest metadata.

How does repositoryDocument work? This contains the name and URL of the source data provider (e.g., arXiv, PubMed Central, a university repository) that contributed the paper to CORE.

Can I search by year? Yes. Use yearFrom and/or yearTo to filter by publication year in any mode.