DOAJ Open Access Journal & Article Scraper

Extract open access journal and article metadata from the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) — the world's largest curated index of peer-reviewed open access content, covering 20,000+ journals and 10 million+ articles across all academic disciplines.

What Is DOAJ?

DOAJ is a community-curated online directory that indexes high-quality, open access, peer-reviewed journals. It is widely used by researchers, librarians, and publishers to discover legitimate open access venues and verify journal quality.

What This Actor Does

This actor queries the DOAJ public API to:

• Search articles by keyword or subject, with optional language and year filters
• Search journals by keyword or subject, with optional language filter
• Look up a journal by ISSN (print or electronic)
• Get a specific article by DOAJ ID

No authentication or API key is required. The actor respects the 2 requests/second rate limit.

Modes

Mode	Description	Key Parameters
searchArticles	Search OA articles by keyword	searchQuery, subject, language, fromYear, toYear
searchJournals	Search peer-reviewed OA journals	searchQuery, subject, language
getArticle	Get an article by DOAJ ID	articleId
getJournal	Look up a journal by ISSN	issn

Input Parameters

Parameter	Type	Description
mode	Select	Operating mode (default: searchArticles)
searchQuery	String	Free-text keyword search (default: climate change, prefill: renewable energy)
subject	String	Subject filter (e.g. Medicine, Biology, Computer Science)
language	Select	Filter by language: EN, FR, DE, ES, PT, ZH, AR, JA
articleId	String	DOAJ article ID for getArticle mode
issn	String	Journal ISSN for getJournal mode (e.g. 0099-2240)
fromYear	Integer	Filter articles published from this year onward
toYear	Integer	Filter articles published up to this year
maxItems	Integer	Maximum records to return (1–500, default 50)

Output

Article Fields

Field	Type	Description
doajId	String	Unique DOAJ identifier
title	String	Article title
journalTitle	String	Publishing journal name
issns	Array	Journal ISSNs
doi	String	Digital Object Identifier
authors	Array	Author names
abstract	String	Article abstract
keywords	Array	Author-assigned keywords
subjects	Array	Subject classification terms
year	Integer	Publication year
month	Integer	Publication month
fulltextUrl	String	Full-text URL
recordType	String	Always article
scrapedAt	String	ISO 8601 timestamp

Journal Fields

Field	Type	Description
doajId	String	Unique DOAJ identifier
title	String	Journal title
alternativeTitle	String	Alternative title or abbreviation
pissn	String	Print ISSN
eissn	String	Electronic ISSN
publisher	String	Publisher name
country	String	Publisher country
language	Array	Languages published in
subjects	Array	Subject classification terms
keywords	Array	Journal keywords
hasApc	Boolean	Whether article processing charges apply
apcMax	Integer	Maximum APC amount
apcCurrency	String	APC currency code
licenseType	String	License (e.g. CC BY)
reviewProcess	Array	Peer review types
openAccessStart	Integer	Year OA publishing began
journalUrl	String	Journal homepage URL
recordType	String	Always journal
scrapedAt	String	ISO 8601 timestamp

Example Input

Search for open access articles about renewable energy:

{
  "mode": "searchArticles",
  "searchQuery": "renewable energy",
  "language": "EN",
  "maxItems": 20
}

Search journals in the Medicine subject area:

{
  "mode": "searchJournals",
  "searchQuery": "oncology",
  "subject": "Medicine",
  "maxItems": 10
}

Get an article by DOAJ ID:

{
  "mode": "getArticle",
  "articleId": "000122f776cb4f27b0f575971a4bed38"
}

Look up a journal by ISSN:

{
  "mode": "getJournal",
  "issn": "0099-2240"
}

FAQs

Is an API key required? No. The DOAJ API is fully public and requires no authentication.

How many records can I get? Set maxItems up to 500 per run. For larger datasets, run the actor multiple times with different queries or year ranges.

What is the rate limit? DOAJ allows 2 requests per second. The actor automatically enforces this with a 0.6-second delay between pages.

Can I filter by subject? Yes — use the subject parameter to filter by DOAJ subject classification (e.g. Biology, Medicine, Engineering).

Can I filter by language? Yes — select from the language dropdown: English, French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, Arabic, or Japanese.

Can I filter by publication year? Yes — for article searches, use fromYear and toYear to narrow results to a specific time range.

What open access licenses are included? DOAJ covers CC BY, CC BY-SA, CC BY-NC, CC BY-NC-SA, CC BY-ND, CC BY-NC-ND, and other open licenses.

Are preprints included? No. DOAJ only indexes peer-reviewed journals and their articles.

How do I find a DOAJ article ID? The DOAJ ID is a 32-character hex string visible in the DOAJ article URL: https://doaj.org/article/<id>. Use mode=searchArticles first to find IDs, then mode=getArticle to fetch full details.