PLOS Open Access Journals Scraper

Search and browse academic articles from PLOS (Public Library of Science) — one of the world's largest publishers of fully open-access peer-reviewed research. This actor uses the official PLOS Solr search API, which is free and requires no API key.

Supported Journals:

• PLOS ONE
• PLOS Biology
• PLOS Medicine
• PLOS Genetics
• PLOS Computational Biology
• PLOS Pathogens
• PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases

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What You Can Do

• Keyword search across 400,000+ articles in all PLOS journals
• Browse by journal to get the latest articles from a specific PLOS publication
• Filter by article type — Research Articles, Reviews, Meta-Analyses, Perspectives, and more
• Filter by date range to narrow results to a publication window
• Paginate through large result sets up to 10,000 articles per run

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Input

Field	Type	Description
mode	Select	searchArticles — keyword search; browseJournal — list articles from one journal
query	String	Search terms (e.g. machine learning, title:CRISPR, abstract:vaccine). Supports Solr syntax.
journal	Select	Filter to a specific PLOS journal (default: PLOS ONE)
articleType	Select	Filter by article type (Research Article, Review, Meta-Analysis, etc.)
fromDate	String	Earliest publication date in YYYY-MM-DD format (e.g. 2023-01-01)
toDate	String	Latest publication date in YYYY-MM-DD format (e.g. 2024-12-31)
maxItems	Integer	Max articles to return (default: 100, max: 10,000)

Example Inputs

Search for machine learning articles in PLOS Computational Biology:

{
  "mode": "searchArticles",
  "query": "machine learning",
  "journal": "PLOS Computational Biology",
  "articleType": "Research Article",
  "maxItems": 50
}

Browse recent PLOS Medicine articles:

{
  "mode": "browseJournal",
  "journal": "PLOS Medicine",
  "maxItems": 100
}

Search for COVID-19 papers published in 2023:

{
  "mode": "searchArticles",
  "query": "COVID-19 vaccine",
  "fromDate": "2023-01-01",
  "toDate": "2023-12-31",
  "maxItems": 200
}

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Output

Each record in the dataset contains:

Field	Type	Description
doi	String	Digital Object Identifier, e.g. 10.1371/journal.pone.0123456
title	String	Article title
authors	Array	Author names, e.g. ["Alice Smith", "Bob Jones"]
journal	String	Journal name, e.g. PLOS ONE
publication_date	String	Publication date in YYYY-MM-DD format
article_type	String	Article type, e.g. Research Article
subjects	Array	Subject category paths, e.g. ["/Science/Biology/Genetics"]
abstract	String	Article abstract text
url	String	Canonical DOI URL, e.g. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0123456
plos_url	String	PLOS journal page URL, e.g. https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=...
scrapedAt	String	ISO 8601 timestamp of when the record was scraped

Example Output Record

{
  "doi": "10.1371/journal.pone.0123456",
  "title": "Genomic Analysis of SARS-CoV-2 Variants",
  "authors": ["Alice Smith", "Bob Jones", "Carol White"],
  "journal": "PLOS ONE",
  "publication_date": "2024-03-15",
  "article_type": "Research Article",
  "subjects": [
    "/Science/Biology/Genetics/Genomics",
    "/Medicine/Infectious Diseases/Viral Diseases/COVID 19"
  ],
  "abstract": "We performed whole-genome sequencing on 500 SARS-CoV-2 isolates...",
  "url": "https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0123456",
  "plos_url": "https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0123456",
  "scrapedAt": "2026-06-04T10:00:00+00:00"
}

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Search Query Syntax

The query field supports full Solr query syntax:

Example	Effect
machine learning	Full-text search for "machine learning"
title:CRISPR	Search only in article titles
abstract:vaccine	Search only in abstracts
author:Smith	Filter by author name
*:*	Match all articles

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Use Cases

• Literature reviews — Gather all Research Articles on a topic for systematic review
• Citation analysis — Extract article metadata for bibliometric analysis
• Research monitoring — Track new publications in specific PLOS journals
• Academic data pipelines — Feed article metadata into knowledge graphs or RAG systems
• Science journalism — Find recent research on trending topics

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FAQ

Do I need an API key? No. The PLOS Solr API is completely free and open. No registration, account, or API key is required.

How many articles can I scrape? The PLOS API indexes over 400,000 articles. You can retrieve up to 10,000 per run using the maxItems parameter.

How fresh is the data? The PLOS API returns live data. Articles are indexed shortly after publication.

Can I search specific fields? Yes — the query field supports Solr syntax. Use title:keyword to search titles, abstract:keyword for abstracts, etc.

Are all PLOS journals covered? Yes. All seven major PLOS journals are supported.

What article types are available? Research Articles, Reviews, Meta-Analyses, Perspectives, Corrections, Retractions, Editorials, Opinions, Essays, Primers, Community Pages, Software papers, and Methods & Resources articles.

Will results include the full text? No — the actor returns metadata and abstracts. Full text is available on the linked PLOS article page.

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Data Source

This actor uses the official PLOS Search API at https://api.plos.org/search, which is powered by Apache Solr. PLOS (Public Library of Science) is a non-profit publisher that provides fully open-access research articles at no cost. See PLOS API documentation for details.