PubMed Medical Papers Tracker

Search and monitor PubMed medical literature via the NCBI E-utilities API — completely free, no API key required. Ideal for tracking the latest research on drugs, diseases, treatments, and clinical trials.

What does PubMed Medical Papers Tracker do?

This Actor searches PubMed's database of 36+ million biomedical citations and returns structured records including:

• Title, abstract, and authors
• Journal name and publication date
• DOI and direct PubMed URL
• Article type (Clinical Trial, Review, Meta-Analysis, etc.)
• MeSH terms (Medical Subject Headings)
• Open-access flag (free full-text availability via PubMed Central)

Use cases

• Drug research: Track efficacy and safety studies for specific compounds
• Disease monitoring: Follow latest research on cancer, diabetes, cardiovascular disease
• Clinical trial discovery: Find Phase II/III trials in your therapeutic area
• Systematic reviews: Gather papers for evidence synthesis
• Competitive intelligence: Monitor publications from research groups or institutions
• Medical journalism: Stay current on breakthrough research

Input parameters

Parameter	Type	Description
searchTerm	string	PubMed search query (supports MeSH, field tags)
maxResults	integer	Max papers to return (1–10000, default 100)
dateFrom	string	Publication start date (YYYY/MM/DD)
dateTo	string	Publication end date (YYYY/MM/DD)
articleTypes	array	Filter by type: Clinical Trial, Review, Meta-Analysis, etc.
sortBy	string	relevance (default), pub_date, Author, JournalName
includeAbstract	boolean	Fetch full abstracts (default true)
ncbiApiKey	string	Optional NCBI API key for 10 req/s (vs 3 req/s)

Advanced search queries

PubMed supports field-tagged searches:

BRCA1[Gene Name] AND breast cancer[MeSH Terms]
metformin[Title/Abstract] AND type 2 diabetes[MeSH Terms] AND ("2022"[pdat] : "3000"[pdat])
COVID-19[MeSH Terms] AND vaccine efficacy[Title]
Smith J[Author] AND Nature Medicine[Journal]

Output format

Each paper record contains:

{
  "pmid": "37654321",
  "title": "Efficacy of mRNA COVID-19 Vaccines Against Omicron Subvariants",
  "abstract": "Background: ... Methods: ... Results: ...",
  "authors": ["Smith J", "Doe A", "Johnson B"],
  "journal": "New England Journal of Medicine",
  "publication_date": "2024-01-15",
  "year": 2024,
  "doi": "10.1056/NEJMoa2302462",
  "pubmed_url": "https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37654321/",
  "article_types": ["Clinical Trial", "Randomized Controlled Trial"],
  "mesh_terms": ["COVID-19 Vaccines", "mRNA Vaccines", "Omicron"],
  "is_free_full_text": true,
  "citation_count": null,
  "source": "PubMed"
}

Pricing

• $0.005 per Actor start
• $0.002 per paper returned

Fetching 100 papers costs approximately $0.21.

API details

Powered by NCBI E-utilities — a free public API with:

• 3 requests/second without API key
• 10 requests/second with free NCBI API key (register at NCBI)

The Actor respects rate limits automatically using an async semaphore and 1-second delays between batches.

Example: Track COVID-19 vaccine clinical trials (2023–2024)

{
  "searchTerm": "COVID-19 vaccine efficacy",
  "maxResults": 50,
  "dateFrom": "2023/01/01",
  "dateTo": "2024/12/31",
  "articleTypes": ["Clinical Trial", "Randomized Controlled Trial"],
  "sortBy": "pub_date",
  "includeAbstract": true
}

Example: Find meta-analyses on GLP-1 drugs for obesity

{
  "searchTerm": "semaglutide OR tirzepatide AND obesity[MeSH Terms]",
  "maxResults": 30,
  "articleTypes": ["Meta-Analysis", "Systematic Review"],
  "sortBy": "relevance",
  "includeAbstract": true
}

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## Feedback

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Keywords: PubMed papers scraper, NCBI E-utilities API, medical literature search, academic paper tracker, clinical trial papers, meta-analysis search, PubMed abstract extractor, biomedical research scraper, open-access papers, DOI extractor, MeSH terms PubMed, journal article scraper, research paper aggregator, medical paper search