# Research Paper Scraper: OpenAlex, Crossref & arXiv (`glitchbound/research-scraper`) Actor

Search 250M+ academic papers across OpenAlex, Crossref and arXiv in one table: title, authors, institutions, venue, DOI, citation count, open-access status, topics, abstract and PDF links. Filter by year, citations or open access. Cross-source duplicates removed by DOI.

- **URL**: https://apify.com/glitchbound/research-scraper.md
- **Developed by:** [Daniel Meshulam](https://apify.com/glitchbound) (community)
- **Categories:** AI, SEO tools, Developer tools
- **Stats:** 2 total users, 1 monthly users, 100.0% runs succeeded, 0 bookmarks
- **User rating**: No ratings yet

## Pricing

from $1.00 / 1,000 papers

This Actor is paid per event. You are not charged for the Apify platform usage, but only a fixed price for specific events.
Since this Actor supports Apify Store discounts, the price gets lower the higher subscription plan you have.

Learn more: https://docs.apify.com/platform/actors/running/actors-in-store#pay-per-event

## What's an Apify Actor?

Actors are web data automations that power AI and operations. They run on the Apify platform to scrape websites, process data, connect APIs, and automate workflows.
In Batch mode, an Actor accepts a well-defined JSON input, performs an action which can take anything from a few seconds to a few hours,
and optionally produces a well-defined JSON output, datasets with results, or files in key-value store.
In Standby mode, an Actor provides a web server which can be used as a website, API, or an MCP server.
Actors are written with capital "A".

## How to integrate an Actor?

If asked about integration, you help developers integrate Actors into their projects.
You adapt to their stack and deliver integrations that are safe, well-documented, and production-ready.
The best way to integrate Actors is as follows.

- **AI agents and MCP clients** — the [Apify MCP server](https://docs.apify.com/integrations/mcp.md) at `https://mcp.apify.com` (remote, streamable HTTP, OAuth on first use).
- **Agentic workflows and local Actor development** — [Agent Skills](https://apify.com/.well-known/agent-skills/index.json) with the [Apify CLI](https://docs.apify.com/cli/docs.md): `npm install -g apify-cli`, then `apify login`.
- **JavaScript/TypeScript projects** — the official [JS/TS client](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/js/docs.md): `npm install apify-client`.
- **Python projects** — the official [Python client](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/python/docs.md): `pip install apify-client`.
- **Any other language** — the [REST API](https://docs.apify.com/api/v2.md).

For usage examples, see the [API](#api) section below.

For more details, see Apify documentation as [Markdown index](https://docs.apify.com/llms.txt) and [Markdown full-text](https://docs.apify.com/llms-full.txt).

# README

## Research Paper Scraper: OpenAlex, Crossref & arXiv

Search **250M+ academic papers** across three official scholarly databases and get one clean table, with citation counts, authors, institutions, open-access status and PDF links.

No key, no login, no institutional subscription.

### Three databases, one shape

| Source | What it's best at |
|---|---|
| **OpenAlex** | 250M+ works with **citation counts**, author affiliations, institutions, topics and OA status. The default. |
| **Crossref** | The DOI registry itself, authoritative for published journal articles and reference counts. |
| **arXiv** | Preprints, with **direct PDF links**: the only source that reliably gives you something downloadable. |

Query several at once to compare coverage. The same paper legitimately appears in all three; `dedupeAcrossSources` matches on **DOI** (falling back to normalised title) and keeps one copy, **duplicates are not charged.**

### What you get

| Field | Example |
|---|---|
| `title` | `Swin Transformer: Hierarchical Vision Transformer…` |
| `authors`, `authorCount` | `["Ze Liu","Yutong Lin","Yue Cao"]`, `8` |
| `institutions` | `["Microsoft Research Asia","Tsinghua University"]` |
| `year`, `publishedAt` | `2021`, `2021-10-01` |
| **`citedByCount`** | `30720` |
| `venue`, `publisher`, `type` | `ICCV`, `IEEE`, `conference-paper` |
| `doi`, `url`, `pdfUrl`, `openAccessUrl` | |
| `isOpenAccess`, `isRetracted` | `true`, `false` |
| `topics`, `categories`, `language` | |
| `abstract` | on Crossref and arXiv rows |
| `referenceCount`, `arxivId` | |

### Example input

```json
{
  "searchQueries": ["large language models", "retrieval augmented generation"],
  "sources": ["openalex", "arxiv"],
  "yearFrom": 2023,
  "minCitations": 50,
  "openAccessOnly": true,
  "maxResultsPerQuery": 200
}
```

### Filters

- `yearFrom` / `yearTo`, publication window
- `minCitations`, impact threshold
- `openAccessOnly`, only papers you can actually read

Filtered-out and deduplicated papers are **not charged**.

### Who this is for

- **Literature reviews**: a whole field in one export, sorted by citations
- **R\&D and competitive intel**, who's publishing in your space, at which institutions
- **AI / dataset builders**: clean paper metadata with abstracts and downloadable PDFs
- **Bibliometrics**: citation counts and institutional affiliations at scale
- **Journalists & analysts**: find the highly-cited work behind a claim

### Three academic databases, deduplicated

| Source | Endpoint | Strongest at |
|---|---|---|
| **OpenAlex** | `api.openalex.org/works` | coverage, citation counts, topics, institutions |
| **Crossref** | `api.crossref.org/works` | DOI metadata and abstracts for anything published |
| **arXiv** | the arXiv Atom API | preprints, often months before formal publication |

Pick any combination in `sources`. The same paper appears in more than one, so
`dedupeAcrossSources` matches on DOI, falling back to a normalised title, and
keeps one copy. **Duplicates are not charged.**

**Per paper**: title, authors, abstract where the source publishes one, year,
venue, DOI, citation count, open-access status and a link to the PDF when one
exists, plus topics and institutions on OpenAlex rows.

**Filters**: `yearFrom` / `yearTo`, `minCitations`, and `openAccessOnly` for a
literature review you can actually read without a library subscription.

**No API key for any of the three.** OpenAlex and Crossref both ask politely for
a contact address in the user agent rather than a key, and this sends one.

### Notes

- **arXiv publishes no citation counts.** If you set `minCitations`, arXiv rows are all removed, the Actor warns you in the log rather than silently returning nothing. Use OpenAlex or Crossref for citation filtering.
- Abstracts come from Crossref and arXiv. OpenAlex rows carry topics and institutions instead.
- All three APIs ask callers to identify themselves with a contact address (their "polite pool"). This Actor does, by design, that's the entire access requirement.
- Set a **max charge per run** in the run options for a hard spend ceiling. The Actor honors it and stops cleanly.

### Pricing

Pay per result. One row = one paper. Failed queries come back as `error` rows and are **not** charged, and neither are duplicates or anything your filters removed.

# Actor input Schema

## `searchQueries` (type: `array`):

Topics to search for, one per line, e.g. "protein folding", "large language models".

## `sources` (type: `array`):

Which databases to query: openalex (250M+ works with citations, the default), crossref (the DOI registry), arxiv (preprints with PDF links). Query several to compare coverage.

## `maxResultsPerQuery` (type: `integer`):

Cap per query per source, before filtering.

## `yearFrom` (type: `integer`):

Only papers published in or after this year.

## `yearTo` (type: `integer`):

Only papers published in or before this year.

## `minCitations` (type: `integer`):

Only papers cited at least this many times. Note that arXiv publishes no citation counts, so this filter removes all arXiv rows.

## `openAccessOnly` (type: `boolean`):

Only papers you can actually read for free.

## `dedupeAcrossSources` (type: `boolean`):

The same paper appears in all three databases. Match on DOI (falling back to title) and keep one copy, and duplicates are not charged.

## `proxyConfiguration` (type: `object`):

Proxy settings.

## `maxItems` (type: `integer`):

A hard ceiling on rows for the entire run, across every target. The per-target limits above cap each one separately, so fifty targets at twenty each is still a thousand rows; this caps the total. The run stops cleanly when it is reached and nothing beyond that point is fetched or charged. Leave empty for no ceiling.

## Actor input object example

```json
{
  "searchQueries": [
    "large language models"
  ],
  "sources": [
    "openalex"
  ],
  "maxResultsPerQuery": 50,
  "minCitations": 0,
  "openAccessOnly": false,
  "dedupeAcrossSources": true,
  "proxyConfiguration": {
    "useApifyProxy": true
  }
}
```

# Actor output Schema

## `results` (type: `string`):

Academic papers with authors, venue, citation count and PDF links.

# API

You can run this Actor programmatically using our API. Below are code examples in JavaScript, Python, and CLI, as well as the OpenAPI specification and MCP server setup.

## JavaScript example

```javascript
import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

// Initialize the ApifyClient with your Apify API token
// Replace the '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>' with your token
const client = new ApifyClient({
    token: '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>',
});

// Prepare Actor input
const input = {
    "searchQueries": [
        "large language models"
    ]
};

// Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
const run = await client.actor("glitchbound/research-scraper").call(input);

// Fetch and print Actor results from the run's dataset (if any)
console.log('Results from dataset');
console.log(`💾 Check your data here: https://console.apify.com/storage/datasets/${run.defaultDatasetId}`);
const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
items.forEach((item) => {
    console.dir(item);
});

// 📚 Want to learn more 📖? Go to → https://docs.apify.com/api/client/js/docs

```

## Python example

```python
from apify_client import ApifyClient

# Initialize the ApifyClient with your Apify API token
# Replace '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>' with your token.
client = ApifyClient("<YOUR_API_TOKEN>")

# Prepare the Actor input
run_input = { "searchQueries": ["large language models"] }

# Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
run = client.actor("glitchbound/research-scraper").call(run_input=run_input)

# Fetch and print Actor results from the run's dataset (if there are any)
print(f"💾 Check your data here: https://console.apify.com/storage/datasets/{run.default_dataset_id}")
for item in client.dataset(run.default_dataset_id).iterate_items():
    print(item)

# 📚 Want to learn more 📖? Go to → https://docs.apify.com/api/client/python/docs/quick-start

```

## CLI example

```bash
echo '{
  "searchQueries": [
    "large language models"
  ]
}' |
apify call glitchbound/research-scraper --silent --output-dataset

```

## MCP server setup

```json
{
    "mcpServers": {
        "apify": {
            "type": "http",
            "url": "https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=fetch-actor-details,glitchbound/research-scraper"
        }
    }
}

```

The hosted server signs you in with OAuth on first connect, so no API token belongs in this config. Clients without OAuth support can send an `Authorization: Bearer <APIFY_API_TOKEN>` header instead, using a token from API & Integrations in Apify Console (https://console.apify.com/settings/integrations).

## OpenAPI specification

Download the OpenAPI definition: https://api.apify.com/v2/actors/3PNHXc0WLp0fgLmnu/builds/hr4kpIjnA1AOf73Uy/openapi.json