OSF Preprints Scraper

Scrape preprints from the Open Science Framework (OSF) using its public REST API — no authentication or proxy required.

What It Does

This actor extracts preprint metadata from OSF's preprint archive, which hosts over 190,000 open-access scholarly works across disciplines including psychology, medicine, social sciences, engineering, and more. It supports filtering by tags, subjects, and provider, as well as direct ID-based lookup.

Key Features

• No authentication required — uses the public OSF API
• Two modes: search/browse preprints or fetch specific ones by ID
• Filter by tags, subjects, or provider (e.g., PsyArXiv, SocArXiv, MedArXiv)
• Pagination handled automatically — retrieves up to 1,000 records per run
• Clean structured output with camelCase field names

Input Fields

Field	Type	Description
mode	Select	searchPreprints (default) or getById
searchQuery	String	Filter preprints by tag (e.g. machine learning)
subjectFilter	String	Filter by subject text (e.g. Medicine and Health Sciences)
provider	String	Filter by provider (e.g. psyarxiv, socarxiv, osf)
preprintIds	Array	List of OSF preprint IDs (for getById mode)
maxItems	Integer	Max number of results (1–1000, default 50)

Provider Examples

Popular OSF preprint providers you can filter by:

Provider ID	Description
osf	General OSF preprints
psyarxiv	Psychology
socarxiv	Social sciences
medarxiv	Medicine
eartharxiv	Earth sciences
engrxiv	Engineering
biorxiv	Biology
ecsarxiv	Electrochemical Society

Output Fields

Each item in the dataset contains:

Field	Type	Description
preprintId	String	Unique OSF preprint ID (e.g. abc12_v2)
title	String	Title of the preprint
description	String	Abstract or summary
doi	String	Digital Object Identifier
datePublished	String	Publication date (ISO 8601)
dateCreated	String	Creation date (ISO 8601)
dateModified	String	Last modified date (ISO 8601)
tags	Array	Author-assigned tags
isPublished	Boolean	Whether the preprint is publicly published
provider	String	Provider ID (e.g. psyarxiv)
subjects	Array	Subject classifications
license	String	License name (e.g. CC-By Attribution 4.0)
sourceUrl	String	Direct URL to the preprint on OSF
recordType	String	Always "preprint"
scrapedAt	String	Timestamp when the record was scraped

Example Output

{
  "preprintId": "snveb_v2",
  "title": "Beyond the Resume: Comparing the Predictive Power of Personality Assessments",
  "description": "This study examines employee turnover prediction using machine learning...",
  "doi": "10.31234/osf.io/snveb_v2",
  "datePublished": "2026-05-26T13:58:36.783000Z",
  "dateCreated": "2026-05-25T09:31:34.214181Z",
  "dateModified": "2026-05-26T13:58:36.814700Z",
  "tags": ["Machine learning", "Employee turnover", "Explainable AI"],
  "isPublished": true,
  "provider": "psyarxiv",
  "subjects": ["Industrial and Organizational Psychology", "Quantitative Methods"],
  "sourceUrl": "https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/snveb_v2/",
  "recordType": "preprint",
  "scrapedAt": "2026-05-30T10:00:00.000000+00:00"
}

Use Cases

• Academic research: Track preprints in specific fields
• Literature reviews: Collect papers by subject or tag for systematic reviews
• Trend analysis: Monitor publication rates by subject over time
• Citation tracking: Gather DOIs for downstream citation analysis
• Content aggregation: Build databases of open-access scholarly works

FAQs

Q: Does this require an API key? A: No. The OSF public API is freely accessible without authentication.

Q: How many results can I get? A: Up to 1,000 per run. OSF has 190,000+ preprints total.

Q: Can I filter by date? A: Not directly via this actor's inputs. You can filter by tag and subject, then sort results by datePublished in post-processing.

Q: What's the difference between providers? A: Different academic communities host preprint servers on OSF (e.g., PsyArXiv for psychology). Using the provider filter restricts results to that community.

Q: Are all preprints peer-reviewed? A: No — preprints are pre-peer-review. The isPublished field indicates OSF server acceptance, not journal peer review.

Q: How current is the data? A: The OSF API returns live data. New preprints appear within hours of submission.