Crossref Works Scraper — DOIs, Authors & Citations

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🎯 What this scrapes

Crossref is the DOI registration agency behind most scholarly publishing — 150M+ journal articles, book chapters, datasets, preprints, and proceedings, each with publisher-submitted metadata exposed through one keyless JSON API. The catch is cursor-only deep paging plus metadata that nests authors, funders, and licenses several levels down. This Actor walks Crossref's cursor pages for you and flattens every work into one row — authors keep their ORCID and affiliation, funders keep their award numbers — so a scholarly-output tracker or funder-compliance report lands straight in a spreadsheet.

🔥 What we handle for you

walks Crossref's cursor paging so there is no ~10 000-record offset ceiling flattens nested author/funder/license blocks into clean rows — authors keep ORCID and affiliation, funders keep award numbers retries transient 429/5xx responses with backoff instead of failing the whole run

💡 Use cases

• Track a competitor lab's or institution's new publications as they're registered with Crossref.
• Pull citation counts for a grant or tenure report without hand-rolling the API.
• Check funder compliance — confirm published works credit the right funder and award number.
• Build a publisher- or journal-level dataset of works, ISSNs, and licenses for a research-ops pipeline.

⚙️ How to use it

1. Click Try for free at the top of the page.
2. Fill in the input form — most fields have sensible defaults.
3. Click Start. Output streams into the run's dataset.
4. Export from Storage → Dataset as JSON, CSV, or Excel — or fetch via the API.

📥 Input

Field	Type	Required	Default	Notes
query	string	no	'climate change adaptation'	Free-text bibliographic search (title, author, journal, year all matched together). Leave empty if you are filtering…
fromPublicationDate	string	no	'2020-01-01'	Only works published on or after this date, as YYYY-MM-DD. Leave empty for no floor.
untilPublicationDate	string	no	'—'	Only works published on or before this date, as YYYY-MM-DD. Leave empty for no ceiling.
workType	string	no	'journal-article'	Restrict to one Crossref work type. Leave empty to match every type.
publisherName	string	no	'—'	Substring match against the publisher name, e.g. Elsevier. Leave empty for any publisher.
hasOrcid	boolean	no	False	Only return works where at least one author has an ORCID on file.
hasAbstract	boolean	no	False	Only return works that carry an abstract.
hasFullText	boolean	no	False	Only return works Crossref has a full-text link for.
funderName	string	no	'—'	A funder's common name (e.g. Wellcome Trust) matched case-insensitively against each work's funder list,…
sortField	string	no	'score'	Field Crossref sorts results by.
sortOrder	string	no	'desc'	Ascending or descending.
maxResults	integer	no	100	Stop after this many works. Each work is one billed result row.
proxyConfiguration	object	no	{'useApifyProxy': False}	Crossref is a public API and does not need a proxy. Leave this off unless your account requires egress through Apify…

Example input

{
  "query": "climate change adaptation",
  "workType": "journal-article",
  "maxResults": 3,
  "proxyConfiguration": {
    "useApifyProxy": false
  }
}

📤 Output

Every row is one dataset item.

Field	Type	Notes
doi	string	Bare DOI string, e.g. 10.1037/xyz (no https://doi.org/ prefix).
title	string	Work title.
type	string	Crossref work type, e.g. journal-article.
publisher	string	Publisher name.
container_title	string	Journal or series title (first entry if Crossref lists several).
authors	array	Author list, each with name, orcid, and affiliation.
author_count	integer	Number of authors — convenience scalar.
published_date	string	Best-available publication date (YYYY, YYYY-MM, or YYYY-MM-DD).
volume	string	Journal volume.
issue	string	Journal issue.
page	string	Page range.
issn	array	ISSNs (print and/or electronic).
license_url	string	License URL (first entry if Crossref lists several).
license_count	integer	Number of license entries Crossref returned.
funders	array	Funder list, each with name, doi, and award_numbers.
is_referenced_by_count	integer	Citation count.
abstract	string	Abstract, passed through verbatim (JATS XML tags included, not stripped).
url	string	Work URL — Crossref's own URL, or https://doi.org/<doi> when absent.

Example output

{
  "doi": "10.1371/journal.pone.0212345",
  "title": "Example study on citation graphs",
  "type": "journal-article",
  "publisher": "Public Library of Science (PLoS)",
  "container_title": "PLOS ONE",
  "authors": [
    {
      "name": "Jane Q. Researcher",
      "orcid": "0000-0002-1234-5678",
      "affiliation": "University of Somewhere"
    }
  ],
  "author_count": 1,
  "published_date": "2023-04-12",
  "volume": "18",
  "issue": "4",
  "page": "e0212345",
  "issn": [
    "1932-6203"
  ],
  "license_url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/",
  "license_count": 1,
  "funders": [
    {
      "name": "Wellcome Trust",
      "doi": "10.13039/100004440",
      "award_numbers": [
        "WT12345"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "is_referenced_by_count": 42,
  "abstract": "<jats:p>We present an analysis of...</jats:p>",
  "url": "https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0212345"
}

💰 Pricing

Pay-Per-Event — you pay only when these events fire:

Event	USD	What it is
actor-start	$0.05	One-off warm-up charge per run
result	$0.002	Per dataset item

Example: 1 000 results at the rates above ≈ $2.05. No subscription, no minimum, no card to start — Apify gives every new account $5 of free credit.

🚧 Limitations

• Metadata only — it does not download PDFs or full text.
• The abstract field is passed through verbatim, JATS XML tags included; the Actor does not strip or reformat it.
• Free-text funder-name matching is a client-side substring match and can return false positives (e.g. "Gates" matches multiple foundations) — pass the exact Funder DOI for precision.

❓ FAQ

Do I need an API key?

No. Crossref's works API is free and keyless. The Actor sends a polite, identifying User-Agent so runs stay inside Crossref's shared rate limit.

How deep can I page?

Crossref's cursor paging has no ~10 000-record wall the way offset paging does — the only limit is the Maximum works you set.

Can I filter by funder name instead of a Funder DOI?

Yes — type a funder's common name (e.g. "Wellcome Trust") and the Actor keeps only works whose funder list contains a case-insensitive match. Pass the exact Funder Registry DOI (e.g. 10.13039/100004440) for an exact server-side filter instead.

💬 Your feedback

Spotted a bug, hit a weird edge case, or need a new field? Open an issue on the Actor's Issues tab on Apify Console — we ship fixes weekly and we read every report.

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