Europe PMC Scraper

Extract biomedical literature from Europe PMC — one of the world's most comprehensive repositories of life science publications, covering 42 million+ records including PubMed/MEDLINE, PubMed Central full-text articles, patents, preprints, theses, and more.

What Is Europe PMC?

Europe PMC is a free, open access repository of biomedical and life sciences literature maintained by the European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI). It aggregates content from multiple sources including PubMed, PubMed Central (PMC), clinical trial records, patents, preprints, and theses — making it the most comprehensive biomedical literature database freely available.

What This Actor Does

This actor queries the Europe PMC REST API to:

• Search publications across all sources by keyword, year range, source database, and open access status
• Retrieve a specific article by PubMed ID (PMID) or DOI
• Get citation lists — all articles citing a given PMID
• Get reference lists — all references of a given PMID

No authentication or API key is required.

Modes

Mode	Description	Key Parameters
search	Full-text search across 42M+ publications	query, source, isOpenAccess, sortBy, fromYear, toYear
byPMID	Get a specific article by PubMed ID	pmid
byDOI	Get a specific article by DOI	doi
citations	Get articles that cite a PMID	pmid
references	Get references of a PMID	pmid

Input Parameters

Parameter	Type	Description
mode	Select	Operating mode (required)
query	String	Search query. Supports field operators like TITLE:malaria AND OPEN_ACCESS:y
pmid	String	PubMed ID (for byPMID, citations, references modes)
doi	String	Article DOI (for byDOI mode)
source	Select	Filter by source: MED, PMC, PAT, ETH, HIR, CTX, AGR, CBA, PPR
isOpenAccess	Boolean	Return only open access articles
sortBy	Select	Sort: relevance (default), cited (most cited), date (most recent)
fromYear	Integer	Filter from this publication year
toYear	Integer	Filter up to this publication year
maxItems	Integer	Maximum records (1–1000, default 50)

Source Database Codes

Code	Description
MED	PubMed/MEDLINE
PMC	Europe PMC full-text articles
PAT	Patents
ETH	EthOS British Library theses
HIR	Health Improvement Research
CTX	ClinicalTrials.gov
AGR	Agricola
CBA	CBA
PPR	Preprints

Output Fields

Field	Type	Description
pmid	String	PubMed ID
pmcid	String	PubMed Central ID (e.g. PMC4371661)
doi	String	Digital Object Identifier
title	String	Publication title
authors	Array	Author names
journalName	String	Journal full name
journalIssn	String	Journal ISSN
pubYear	Integer	Publication year
abstract	String	Full abstract text
language	String	Publication language (e.g. eng)
isOpenAccess	Boolean	Whether freely available
hasPDF	Boolean	Whether PDF is available
citedByCount	Integer	Number of citing articles
pubType	Array	Publication types (e.g. research-article)
fullTextUrls	Array	Full-text access URLs
europePmcUrl	String	Europe PMC article page URL
scrapedAt	String	ISO 8601 scrape timestamp

Example Input

{
  "mode": "search",
  "query": "malaria",
  "maxItems": 10
}

{
  "mode": "search",
  "query": "CRISPR gene editing",
  "source": "MED",
  "isOpenAccess": true,
  "sortBy": "cited",
  "fromYear": 2018,
  "maxItems": 50
}

{
  "mode": "byPMID",
  "pmid": "25781006"
}

{
  "mode": "citations",
  "pmid": "25781006",
  "maxItems": 100
}

Advanced Search Queries

Europe PMC supports field-specific searches:

• TITLE:malaria — search in title only
• ABSTRACT:vaccine — search in abstract only
• AUTH:Smith — filter by author name
• JOURNAL:"Nature" — filter by journal name
• OPEN_ACCESS:y — open access only (same as isOpenAccess: true)
• HAS_PDF:y — filter to records with PDF available
• SRC:PPR — preprints only

Combine with AND, OR, NOT:

TITLE:malaria AND OPEN_ACCESS:y AND PUB_YEAR:[2020 TO 2024]

FAQs

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

What is the rate limit? The actor applies a polite 1-second delay between requests to avoid overloading the server.

Can I get the full text of articles? The fullTextUrls field contains links to full-text versions where available. Open access articles typically provide free HTML and PDF access.

How do I get citations for an article? Use mode=citations with the article's PMID. The actor returns all articles that cite the specified paper.

What is the difference between PMC and MED sources? MED (MEDLINE/PubMed) contains abstracts and metadata. PMC (PubMed Central) contains full-text articles deposited in Europe PMC.

Are preprints included? Yes — use source=PPR to filter specifically for preprints (bioRxiv, medRxiv, etc.) or include them in general searches.

How far back does the data go? Coverage varies by source. MEDLINE includes articles from the 1940s onward; some journals have data from the early 1800s.

How many records can I retrieve? Set maxItems up to 1000 per run. For highly cited search terms, the API returns millions of records — use fromYear/toYear and source filters to narrow results.