iCite NIH Research Publications Scraper

Extract biomedical research publications from the NIH iCite database — the authoritative source for PubMed citation metrics used by the National Institutes of Health. Search by keyword, retrieve specific papers by PubMed ID, or browse publications by year. Every record includes citation counts, relative citation ratios, DOIs, abstracts, and direct PubMed links.

What You Can Do

• Search publications — find research papers matching any keyword or phrase (e.g., "CRISPR", "machine learning", "COVID-19 vaccine")
• Lookup by PubMed ID — retrieve specific papers using their PMID numbers
• Browse by year — collect all publications from a given year or date range
• Filter by year — narrow search results to a specific publication period

Input

Field	Type	Description
Mode	Select	searchPublications, getByPmids, or browseByYear
Search query	Text	Keyword or phrase (required for searchPublications)
PubMed IDs	JSON array	List of PubMed IDs to look up (required for getByPmids)
Year from	Integer	Earliest publication year (required for browseByYear, optional filter for other modes)
Year to	Integer	Latest publication year (optional)
Max items	Integer	Cap on total records returned (1–1000, default 20)

Example Inputs

Search for machine learning papers:

{
  "mode": "searchPublications",
  "query": "machine learning",
  "maxItems": 50
}

Retrieve specific papers by PubMed ID:

{
  "mode": "getByPmids",
  "pmids": [28212749, 30049766, 32907876],
  "maxItems": 100
}

Browse publications from a specific year:

{
  "mode": "browseByYear",
  "yearFrom": 2022,
  "yearTo": 2023,
  "maxItems": 200
}

Output

Each record represents one biomedical research publication:

Field	Type	Description
pmid	Integer	PubMed ID (unique identifier)
pubmedUrl	String	Direct link to the paper on PubMed
doi	String	Digital Object Identifier (when available)
title	String	Full publication title
authors	Array of strings	Author names
year	Integer	Publication year
journal	String	Journal name
citationCount	Integer	Number of times this paper has been cited
referencesCount	Integer	Number of references in this paper
relativeCitationRatio	Float	NIH field-normalized citation metric (1.0 = average)
isResearchArticle	Boolean	Whether classified as a primary research article
abstract	String	Publication abstract (when available)
scrapedAt	String	ISO 8601 timestamp of when the record was scraped

Example Output Record

{
  "pmid": 28212749,
  "pubmedUrl": "https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28212749/",
  "doi": "10.1038/nature21349",
  "title": "A deep learning approach to antibiotic discovery",
  "authors": ["Stokes JM", "Yang K", "Swanson K"],
  "year": 2020,
  "journal": "Cell",
  "citationCount": 1842,
  "referencesCount": 56,
  "relativeCitationRatio": 28.4,
  "isResearchArticle": true,
  "abstract": "Due to the rapid emergence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria...",
  "scrapedAt": "2024-01-15T10:30:00+00:00"
}

Data Source

Data is sourced from the NIH iCite API (https://icite.od.nih.gov/api/pubs), a free public API maintained by the National Institutes of Health with no authentication required. iCite provides citation metrics for all articles indexed in PubMed — over 35 million biomedical publications.

Use Cases

• Literature reviews — systematically collect papers on a research topic
• Citation analysis — identify highly cited papers using the Relative Citation Ratio (RCR)
• Research trend analysis — track publication volume and impact over time
• Academic research — build datasets for scientometric studies
• Grant writing — find and cite relevant prior art efficiently

FAQs

Is this API free to use? Yes. The NIH iCite API is a public, open-access service with no API key required.

How many records can I retrieve? Up to 1,000 records per run using the maxItems setting. For larger datasets, run the actor multiple times with different year ranges or queries.

What is the Relative Citation Ratio (RCR)? RCR is a field-normalized citation metric developed by NIH. A value of 1.0 means the paper is cited at the average rate for its field. Papers with RCR > 2.0 are considered highly impactful.

Are all PubMed articles available? The iCite database covers the majority of PubMed articles with citation data. Some very recent or specialized articles may not yet have citation metrics.

Can I search for a specific author? Use mode=searchPublications with a query like "author name" or search by a known PubMed ID.

How current is the data? NIH updates iCite citation metrics weekly.