RISS Scraper: 학술연구정보서비스 Theses & Papers

See which Korean universities lead any research field Search RISS, Korea's national thesis and academic-paper database, and get a ranked leaderboard of the institutions actually publishing on your topic, alongside the full record for every paper and thesis. No other Apify actor covers RISS at all.

🏆 University leaderboard See who leads your topic, ranked by real output volume, instantly.

📄 Bilingual full records Korean and English abstracts, author, university, and degree type included.

🔁 Monitor mode Get only the newly-indexed theses and papers on a saved search.

🔓 No login needed Public academic metadata, zero account or API key required.

Point this actor at RISS (학술연구정보서비스, riss.kr), the KERIS-run database that indexes over 68,000 Korean domestic journal articles, theses, and overseas journal articles on a single topic search. It returns structured records plus a University Research Output Leaderboard computed automatically from the same results, at no extra cost.

🔍 What does this actor do?

RISS is Korea's national academic search platform, the closest thing Korea has to a combined Google Scholar and national thesis repository. Searching it by hand means paging through category tabs one at a time and manually tallying which institutions show up most. This actor does that work for you.

Search by keyword across domestic journal articles, theses and dissertations, and overseas journal articles. Every result comes back with title, author, university or publisher, year, degree type, and both the Korean and English (or multilingual) abstract when RISS provides one, plus a reference count and similar-researcher count where available.

The University Research Output Leaderboard is the real reason to run this actor: a second, ready-made dataset view that ranks universities by how much they've published on your exact search topic, broken down by domestic journal, thesis, and overseas journal output. It costs nothing extra since it's built from the same rows already in your results. Turn on Monitor Mode to get a running feed of newly-indexed research on a saved topic, instead of re-reading the same results every time.

💡 Who uses this?

• I run market research on Korean R&D activity. I need to know which institutions actually lead a technology area, like semiconductor packaging or battery chemistry, not just a pile of papers I'd have to sort through myself.
• I build academic search or citation-analytics tools. I need structured Korean academic metadata, with real bilingual abstracts, without hand-parsing RISS's own site or paying for a data broker.
• I'm a researcher or graduate student doing a literature review. I want a structured, exportable list of theses and papers on my topic, not a slow afternoon paging through RISS one result at a time.

🚀 How to use

STEP 1 Enter your topic Type a search term, in Korean or English, and pick how many results you want.

STEP 2 The actor searches RISS It checks domestic journals, theses, and overseas journals, and fetches full details for each result.

STEP 3 Get your results and leaderboard Download the full records, plus the University Leaderboard ranking who's active in the field.

📥 Input

Field	Type	Required	Description
query	string	Yes	The term to search for on RISS, in Korean or English.
resultTypes	array of enum	No	Restrict the search to one or more of RISS's three categories: domestic journal articles, theses, overseas journal articles. Leave empty to search all three.
maxResults	integer	No	Maximum results to return, split evenly across the selected categories. Default: 15, kept low so a default run finishes within minutes.
dateFrom	integer	No	Only include results published in or after this year, e.g. 2020.
dateTo	integer	No	Only include results published in or before this year, e.g. 2025.
onlyNewOrChanged	boolean	No	Monitor mode. When on, re-running the same search with the same State Name reports only results not seen in a previous run.
stateName	string	No	Label for this search's saved monitor history, so different saved searches don't overwrite each other.
resetState	boolean	No	Clears this search's saved monitor history before the run starts.
proxyConfiguration	proxy	No	Keep the datacenter default; it reaches RISS without issue and costs far less than residential.

📊 Data table

Field	Type	Description
controlNo	string	RISS's own stable identifier for this result.
title	string	Title of the paper or thesis.
author	string | absent	Author name, when published.
university	string | absent	Degree-granting university (theses) or publishing institution (journal articles). Powers the University Leaderboard.
year	integer | absent	Publication year.
degreeType	string | absent	Degree type, theses only, for example 박사 (PhD) or 석사 (Master's).
resultType	string	Which RISS category this result came from: domesticJournal, thesis, or overseasJournal.
abstractKo	string | absent	Korean-language abstract, when RISS provides one.
abstractEn	string | absent	English or multilingual abstract, when RISS provides one. Overseas journal articles typically don't carry either abstract.
referenceCount	integer | absent	Number of references listed, when RISS publishes a reference list for this result.
similarResearchersCount	integer | absent	Count of similar researchers RISS itself surfaces for this result, when available.
sourceUrl	string	Direct link to the result's RISS detail page.

You can download the dataset in JSON, HTML, CSV, or Excel from the Output tab of any run. The 🏆 University Leaderboard and 📊 Category Breakdown are available from the same run's Key-Value Store tab (as LEADERBOARD and BREAKDOWN records), computed from the same results at no extra charge.

📤 Sample output

{
    "controlNo": "9b2931e7dd2188b4b36097776a77e665",
    "title": "생성 인공지능에 대한 예술 전공생의 인식 조사",
    "author": "이재박",
    "university": "중앙대학교 인공지능인문학연구소",
    "year": 2024,
    "resultType": "domesticJournal",
    "abstractKo": "본 연구는 예술 전공생들을 대상으로 인공지능 창작 기술에 대한 관심정도...",
    "abstractEn": "This study analyzes art majors' perceptions, utilization, satisfaction...",
    "similarResearchersCount": 20,
    "sourceUrl": "https://www.riss.kr/search/detail/DetailView.do?p_mat_type=1a0202e37d52c72d&control_no=9b2931e7dd2188b4b36097776a77e665"
}

💰 Pricing

Pricing is pay per result. You are charged only for records successfully written to your dataset, and the University Leaderboard and Category Breakdown views never cost extra since they're built from the same records. Empty runs cost nothing. There are no monthly subscriptions or minimum commitments.

Free plan runs are limited in items per run, runs per day, and a short wait between runs. These limits do not apply to paid plans.

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✨ Tips

• Start with the leaderboard, not the raw list. Open the run's Key-Value Store tab and check the 🏆 University Leaderboard record first to see who's active in a field before reading individual records.
• Narrow by category when you only need one type. Set resultTypes to just thesis, for example, when you specifically want graduate research rather than published journal articles.
• Bound your years. Use dateFrom/dateTo to focus the leaderboard on recent activity, for example the last five years, rather than a topic's entire publication history.
• Track a field over time. Turn on onlyNewOrChanged with a stateName and schedule the run. Each run after the first reports only newly-indexed research.
• Run separate watchlists. Use a different stateName for each distinct topic you want tracked independently.

❓ FAQ

리스 검색 (RISS search) - can I search RISS through an API?

RISS itself has no public search API. This actor reads RISS's own public, unauthenticated search and detail pages and returns the results as structured data, the same pages any visitor can browse without logging in.

What is the University Research Output Leaderboard?

It's a second dataset view, included in every run, that groups your results by university and ranks them by total output plus category mix (domestic journal, thesis, overseas journal). It's computed from the same records already fetched for your main results, so it never costs extra.

Does this actor download the full text of papers?

No. RISS's own full-text download (원문보기) is login and points-walled on RISS itself. This actor returns bibliographic metadata (title, author, university, abstracts, reference count), never full text, and never attempts to bypass that wall.

Does every result have both a Korean and English abstract?

Not always. RISS provides both for most domestic journal articles and theses, when the author submitted one. Overseas journal article records typically carry only bibliographic details with no abstract at all, since RISS indexes those as citation entries rather than full records.

Is scraping RISS legal?

This actor reads publicly available search and detail pages, the same pages any visitor can view without logging in. You are responsible for complying with RISS's terms of service and applicable laws. For questions or custom fields, contact the author at devanshtiwari365@gmail.com.

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