Crossref Scraper – DOI, Journal & Citation Metadata

Crossref scraper for DOI and scholarly metadata: search 160M+ journal articles, books, preprints and datasets by keyword, date, type or journal ISSN and get title, journal, publisher, citation count, references, funders and licence links. Uses the official Crossref REST API (polite pool).

What does it do?

• DOI, title, type and publication date.
• Journal, ISSN, publisher, subjects, language.
• Cited-by count and reference count.
• Funders, licence URLs and number of authors.

Use cases

• SEO/AEO and content: back articles with highly cited sources.
• AI agents and RAG: resolve and enrich citations with DOIs.
• B2B research: find which publishers and funders are active in a topic.
• Academic tools: build reading lists sorted by citations.

Input

Field	Description
query	Bibliographic search. Example: large language models
fromDate	YYYY-MM-DD
untilDate	YYYY-MM-DD
type	Example: journal-article
issn	Example: 0028-0836
sortBy	relevance, newest or mostCited.
maxItems	Example: 100

Example input:

{
  "query": "search engine optimization",
  "fromDate": "2024-01-01",
  "type": "journal-article",
  "sortBy": "mostCited",
  "maxItems": 25
}

Output

Real output (first items of a run on 26 Oct 2026):

[
  {
    "doi": "10.1038/s41598-024-54910-3",
    "title": "Hippopotamus optimization algorithm: a novel nature-inspired optimization algorithm",
    "type": "journal-article",
    "published": "2024-02-29",
    "publisher": "Springer Science and Business Media LLC",
    "journal": "Scientific Reports",
    "issn": [
      "2045-2322"
    ],
    "subjects": [],
    "citedByCount": 740,
    "referencesCount": 146,
    "authorsCount": 5,
    "funders": [],
    "licenses": [
      "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0",
      "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0"
    ],
    "url": "https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-024-54910-3"
  },
  {
    "doi": "10.1016/j.eswa.2023.122147",
    "title": "Greylag Goose Optimization: Nature-inspired optimization algorithm",
    "type": "journal-article",
    "published": "2024-03",
    "publisher": "Elsevier BV",
    "journal": "Expert Systems with Applications",
    "issn": [
      "0957-4174"
    ],
    "subjects": [],
    "citedByCount": 586,
    "referencesCount": 72,
    "authorsCount": 6,
    "funders": [],
    "licenses": [
      "https://www.elsevier.com/tdm/userlicense/1.0/",
      "https://www.elsevier.com/legal/tdmrep-license",
      "https://doi.org/10.15223/policy-017",
      "https://doi.org/10.15223/policy-037",
      "https://doi.org/10.15223/policy-012",
      "https://doi.org/10.15223/policy-029",
      "https://doi.org/10.15223/policy-004"
    ],
    "url": "https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eswa.2023.122147"
  }
]

Export the results as JSON, CSV or Excel, read them through the API, or send them to Google Sheets, Make, Zapier, n8n or webhooks. You can also run this Actor from AI agents through the Apify MCP server.

Pricing

Pay per event: $0.90 per 1,000 works plus $0.00005 per run start. There is no extra platform usage charge.

FAQ

Are authors or abstracts included? No. Authors are personal data and some abstracts are copyrighted by publishers, so they are excluded. Only the number of authors is given.

How many results? Deep paging with cursors, up to 10,000 per run.

Can I use it commercially? Crossref says almost none of its metadata is copyrighted and it may be used for any purpose.

Do I need a login or API key? No. It uses the source's public API; you only need an Apify account.

Can AI agents use it? Yes. Call it through the Apify API, or from Claude, Cursor or any MCP client via the Apify MCP server.

Data source and license

Source: Crossref REST API: "No sign-up is required to use the REST API, and almost none of the metadata is subject to copyright, and you may use it for any purpose. Some abstracts contained in the metadata may be subject to copyright by publishers or authors." Abstracts and author names are not output. Not affiliated with Crossref.

This Actor is not affiliated with or endorsed by the data source. You are responsible for using the data in line with the source's license and terms.