Researcher Email Finder: PubMed Authors by Topic

Discontinued on 2 November 2026. This Actor is retired for lack of use. A run ends at once with a status message, returns no rows and costs nothing.

Find researchers by topic with the institutional email they published in PubMed papers, plus affiliation, ORCID and recent papers. $0.005 per researcher with email. Give it a topic such as crispr base editing, an author name, or a list of PMIDs or DOIs, and get one row per researcher with the institutional or role address printed in a paper for correspondence, their institution, country, ORCID iD and their latest papers on the topic. Personal-looking addresses (free-mail such as Gmail or 163.com, and first.last@university style) are not returned, so a share of researchers have no email in the results. No login, no API key, no CAPTCHA.

Built for individual scholarly and professional correspondence and for AI research assistants: the same fields on every row, deduplicated by email, and the price tied to the answer you want.

Use cases

• Scholarly correspondence: write to the authors of a paper or a topic about their work (a question on a method, a data request, a collaboration, a review invitation), one researcher at a time.
• Literature and landscape mapping: see which institutions and countries publish on a topic, with ORCID and latest papers.
• AI agents and research assistants: "who works on X, and which institution do they publish from?" as one tool call that charges only for researchers with a returned email.
• Enrichment: turn a list of PMIDs or DOIs into the institutional or role addresses printed for their corresponding authors.

Not a list builder for bulk marketing, sales prospecting or mass recruiting: see "Purpose limit" below.

What it finds

PubMed records the affiliation of every author, and when a paper names a corresponding author, PubMed usually keeps the email printed with it (often as "Electronic address: ..."). This Actor searches PubMed for your topic, reads the full records of the most relevant papers through NCBI's official E-utilities API, and pulls out every author who published an email. Addresses that look personal are then removed (see "Privacy rules"), so expect noticeably fewer rows than the number of published emails.

Each remaining email is cleaned (trailing periods and "Electronic address:" labels removed, lower-cased) and given to the right author. When an affiliation prints several addresses, or several authors share one affiliation string, the address goes to the author whose name matches its local part (wangfei@ goes to Fei Wang, not to his co-author Yang Wang); an address that cannot be tied to one person is dropped rather than guessed.

Researchers are deduplicated by email across all topics and papers in the run, and their other papers in the result (including ones where they did not print the email) are attached to the same row.

How it works

1. Each topic or author name is searched on PubMed (relevance order), with yearFrom limiting it to recent papers.
2. The matching records are fetched in batches of up to 200 and parsed from PubMed's XML.
3. Emails are extracted from author affiliations and assigned to authors; institution and country are read from the affiliation, ORCID from the author record.
4. Personal-looking addresses and anything on the removal list (src/optout_dids.txt) are dropped before a row is built, and the run's status message says how many.
5. A search stops early once it alone has enough researchers for maxResearchers, or at maxPapersScanned.
6. Rows are spread evenly across your topics, newest-publishing researchers first, and capped at maxResearchers.

Requests are paced to NCBI's public limit (about 3 a second) and identify the tool to NCBI, as its usage policy asks.

Input

Field	Meaning
queries	Research topics, one per line. PubMed syntax works: "base editing"[tiab] AND mice.
authorNames	A named researcher: Ana Example, Example AB or Example, Ana. Only that author is returned.
pmids, dois	Specific papers. Every author on them who published an email is returned.
yearFrom	Only papers from this year on, e.g. 2024. Applies to topics and author names.
affiliationContains	Keep researchers whose affiliations include this text (Harvard, Hospital).
countries	Keep researchers whose affiliation country is one of these (United States, DE, UK).
onlyWithEmail	On by default. Off also returns co-authors without a returned email, free.
maxResearchers	Rows to return across all topics (default 50).
maxPapersScanned	Papers read per topic or author (default 500).
source	pubmed (default, most emails) or europepmc (Europe PMC: ORCID for more authors, preprints, fewer emails).
delayMs, proxyConfiguration	Pacing (default 400 ms) and an optional proxy. No proxy by default.

Leave every source field empty to run a built-in example: up to 5 researchers on crispr base editing (about 5 seconds, up to 5 x $0.005).

{
  "queries": ["crispr base editing", "car-t cell therapy solid tumors", "spatial transcriptomics"],
  "yearFrom": 2024,
  "countries": ["United States", "United Kingdom", "Germany"],
  "maxResearchers": 100
}

Output

One row per researcher, deduplicated by email (institutional or role addresses only). Fields that were not found are null, never invented.

{
  "name": "Ana Example",
  "firstName": "Ana",
  "lastName": "Example",
  "email": "genomics-office@example.edu",
  "emailDomain": "example.edu",
  "isAcademicEmail": true,
  "hasEmail": true,
  "affiliation": "Department of Bioengineering, Example University, Example City, USA",
  "institution": "Example University",
  "country": "United States",
  "countryCode": "US",
  "orcid": "0000-0002-1825-0097",
  "orcidUrl": "https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1825-0097",
  "papers": [
    {
      "title": "An example paper on base editing",
      "pmid": "12345678",
      "doi": "10.1234/example.2026.001",
      "journal": "Example Journal",
      "year": 2026,
      "url": "https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12345678/",
      "isCorresponding": true
    }
  ],
  "papersInResult": 11,
  "lastPublishedYear": 2026,
  "matchedQuery": "crispr base editing",
  "input": "query:crispr base editing",
  "scrapedAt": "2026-10-09T15:31:41+00:00"
}

• papers holds the 5 most recent papers in the result; papersInResult counts all of them. isCorresponding is true on papers where the researcher printed their email.
• isAcademicEmail is true for university, research-institute and public-research mailboxes, and false for company domains.
• privacyNotice appears on a row when a personal-looking address printed for that researcher was withheld (it is then a row without an email, free).
• input says what found the row: query:<topic>, author:<name>, pmid:<id> or doi:<doi>.

The dataset has two views: Researchers (one row each) and Papers (one row per researcher and paper).

Pricing

One event, pay per result:

• researcher-with-email: $0.005 for each researcher returned with an institutional or role email.
• With onlyWithEmail on (default), researchers without an email are never returned. Turn it off and they are returned free.
• PubMed papers scanned are never charged; you pay for researchers, not for searching.

Worked example. Three topics with maxResearchers: 150 return 150 researchers with emails: 150 x $0.005 = $0.75. In our test that run read 793 papers in 16 seconds.

Set a maximum total charge on the run and the Actor stops cleanly when it is reached.

What to expect

• Yield: about 1.4 papers per published email on recent life-science papers with PubMed, before personal-looking addresses are removed. Many corresponding authors print a first.last@university or a free-mail address, so the returned share is lower. Europe PMC prints fewer emails but carries ORCID for more authors.
• Who has an email: the corresponding author, when the printed address is institutional or a role address (a lab, department or office mailbox). First and middle authors rarely publish one.
• Free-mail and personal-looking addresses: never returned (Gmail, 163.com, QQ, first.last@).
• Speed: a few seconds per 200 papers.

Limits

• Only emails the authors printed in the paper are returned, minus personal-looking ones. The Actor does not guess addresses from name patterns or look them up elsewhere.
• Emails can go stale when a researcher moves; lastPublishedYear and yearFrom help you keep to current addresses.
• Institution and country are read from the affiliation text, which journals format in many ways; a few rows have no country.
• PubMed covers biomedicine and life sciences. For other fields try source: europepmc, which also indexes preprints.
• Very common author names (Wang Y) match many people; give a full first name.

Use with Python

# pip install apify-client
from apify_client import ApifyClient

client = ApifyClient("YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN")
run = client.actor("datagleaner/researcher-email-finder").call(run_input={
    "queries": ["crispr base editing"],
    "yearFrom": 2024,
    "maxResearchers": 20,  # at most 20 x $0.005 = $0.10
})
for item in client.dataset(run.default_dataset_id).iterate_items():
    print(item["name"], item["email"], item["institution"], item["country"])

Use with JavaScript / Node.js

// npm install apify-client
import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

const client = new ApifyClient({ token: process.env.APIFY_TOKEN });
const run = await client.actor('datagleaner/researcher-email-finder').call({
    queries: ['spatial transcriptomics'],
    countries: ['Germany'],
    yearFrom: 2024,
});
const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
for (const item of items) console.log(item.name, item.email, item.orcidUrl);

Use it from n8n, Make, Zapier or an AI agent

Actor ID: datagleaner/researcher-email-finder

Minimal input:

{"queries": ["crispr base editing"], "yearFrom": 2024}

Each tool below runs this Actor with your own Apify API token.

• n8n: add the Apify node (@apify/n8n-nodes-apify). On n8n Cloud you install it from the community node registry. Choose Run an Actor and get dataset, set Actor to datagleaner/researcher-email-finder and paste the input above.

• Make: use the Apify app's Run an Actor module, then Get Dataset Items to read the results. Watch Actor Runs can trigger a scenario when a run finishes.

• Zapier: use the Apify action Run Actor, then the search Fetch dataset items. The trigger Finished Actor run starts a Zap when a run ends.

• AI agents (MCP): connect to https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=datagleaner/researcher-email-finder. In Claude Code:

  claude mcp add --transport http apify "https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=datagleaner/researcher-email-finder"
  

  Then run /mcp to sign in to Apify in your browser. Other clients can sign in with OAuth or send the header Authorization: Bearer YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN. Clients that run local MCP servers can use Apify's package (@apify/actors-mcp-server, run with npx -y and APIFY_TOKEN set) instead. Then ask the agent in plain words, for example:

  Find 30 researchers in the US and UK who published on CRISPR base editing since 2024, with their emails, institutions and latest paper, as a table.

• LangChain (Python):

# pip install langchain-apify, then set APIFY_TOKEN in your environment
import json
from langchain_apify import ApifyActorsTool
tool = ApifyActorsTool("datagleaner/researcher-email-finder")
result = tool.invoke({"run_input": json.loads('{"queries": ["crispr base editing"], "yearFrom": 2024}')})

FAQ

How do I find a corresponding author's email? Give the paper's PMID or DOI, or a topic, to this Actor. It reads the paper's PubMed record and returns the institutional or role address printed for the corresponding author, with the author's affiliation. If the printed address is personal-looking (free-mail or first.last@), the row has no email.

Where do the emails come from? From the author affiliations in PubMed (or Europe PMC) records, where journals publish the corresponding author's address. Nothing is guessed or bought.

Can I find a specific researcher's email? Put their name in authorNames, e.g. Example AB. If they published an institutional or role address on a paper in range, it is returned with their papers. Personal-looking addresses are not.

Does it get ORCID iDs? Yes, when the record carries one. Europe PMC (source: europepmc) carries ORCID for more authors.

Do I need an NCBI API key? No. The Actor uses NCBI's public E-utilities within the published rate limit.

Is it only for biomedicine? PubMed is biomedical and life-science literature. Europe PMC adds preprints and some other fields.

Related Actors

• Website Contact Details Scraper: emails, phones and social profiles from lab, company or institute websites.
• Team Page Contacts: named people, titles and LinkedIn profiles from a company's team page, for the business side of a biotech or lab-supply target.
• Form D Funding Leads: companies that just raised money, from SEC Form D filings, with named executives, for biotech business development.
• App Developer Email Finder: developer contacts for Google Play, App Store and Steam apps.
• Podcast Email Finder: host and show contacts for podcast guest outreach.

Privacy rules

• Personal-looking addresses are not returned. Free-mail domains and first.last@ style addresses are dropped from every row, and a researcher whose only printed address is one of those comes back without an email. Institutional and role addresses (for example genomics-office@university.edu) stay. When unsure, the Actor leaves the address out.
• Removal list. Emails, domains, names and ORCID iDs on src/optout_dids.txt are never returned (see "Removal requests").
• The run's status message says how many addresses were withheld.

Purpose limit

Use the results only for your own lawful, individual scholarly or professional correspondence with researchers about their work, in line with the law of the recipient's country (for example GDPR and ePrivacy in the EU and UK, CAN-SPAM in the US). Do not resell or republish bulk lists of the results, and do not use them for cold or bulk outreach where the law or an objection forbids it. Addresses were printed in papers for scholarly correspondence, which is a narrower purpose than marketing. You are the controller of what you do with the data and are responsible for a lawful basis, an opt-out in every message, honouring removals, and the terms of PubMed and Europe PMC.

Removal requests (researchers)

If you are a researcher and do not want this Actor to return your email, name or ORCID iD, email datagleaner@gmail.com (Keencrest, the publisher; replies come from an AI agent, Crest, and the business is owner-operated) with the email address, domain, name or ORCID iD to exclude. We add it to a blocklist (src/optout_dids.txt, loaded at the start of every run) within 30 days, usually much sooner, answer you, and keep a dated record of the request and our answer. Personal-looking addresses are not returned in the first place.