Crossref Scraper — Scholarly Works, DOIs, Citations & Metadata

Bulk-scrape scholarly metadata from Crossref, the DOI registry indexing 150M+ works across virtually every academic publisher. Get DOIs, titles, authors (with ORCID), journals, publishers, publication dates, citation counts, references, ISSNs, subjects and abstracts as clean JSON, CSV, Excel or XML. Full-text search plus date and type filters, thousands of results per run. No account, no API key — fast and reliable.

What does the Crossref Scraper do?

The Crossref Scraper searches the Crossref index and returns rich, structured metadata for every matching scholarly work. Filter by free-text query, publication date range and work type, then export DOIs, citation counts, author lists and abstracts at scale — ideal for literature reviews, bibliometrics and building research databases.

Features

• 🔎 Full-text search — across titles, authors, journals and more
• 📅 Date filters — from/until publication date
• 🗂️ Type filter — journal-article, book-chapter, proceedings-article, dataset, preprint…
• 🔗 DOIs + citation counts — citation count per work, plus reference counts
• 👥 Authors with ORCID + affiliation
• 🧾 Abstracts — when the publisher deposits them (coverage varies)
• 📊 Bulk export — scales to hundreds of thousands of records per run

What you get

One record per work:

{
  "doi": "10.1089/crispr.2018.29011.rba",
  "title": "Cultivating CRISPR",
  "type": "journal-article",
  "authors": [{ "name": "Rodolphe Barrangou", "given": "Rodolphe", "family": "Barrangou", "orcid": null, "affiliation": [] }],
  "journal": "The CRISPR Journal",
  "publisher": "SAGE Publications",
  "publishedYear": 2018,
  "citationCount": 12,
  "referenceCount": 0,
  "issn": "2573-1599",
  "subjects": [],
  "url": "https://doi.org/10.1089/crispr.2018.29011.rba",
  "abstract": null
}

Output schema

Field	Type	Description
doi	string	Digital Object Identifier of the work
title	string	Work title
subtitle	string	Work subtitle, if present
type	string	Work type, e.g. journal-article, book-chapter, dataset
authors	array	Author objects with name, given/family, ORCID and affiliation
authorCount	integer	Number of authors
journal	string	Container / journal title
publisher	string	Publisher name
publishedDate	string	Publication date
publishedYear	integer	Publication year
volume	string	Journal volume
issue	string	Journal issue
page	string	Page range
issn	string	ISSN of the containing publication
citationCount	integer	Number of times the work is referenced by others
referenceCount	integer	Number of references the work cites
subjects	array	Subject / category tags
language	string	Language of the work
url	string (URL)	Resolvable DOI link
abstract	string	Abstract text, when the publisher deposits one

Input

{
  "query": "crispr gene editing",
  "fromDate": "2020-01-01",
  "type": "journal-article",
  "maxResults": 5000
}

Field	Type	Description
query	string	Free-text search (blank = browse by filters only).
fromDate / toDate	string	Publication date range.
type	string	Crossref work type filter.
hasAbstractOnly	boolean	Only works that include an abstract.
maxResults	integer	Max works to return.
mailto	string	Your email — used to identify your requests for faster, more reliable access.

Use cases

• Literature reviews & bibliometrics — pull every work on a topic with citation counts.
• Research databases — build DOI/metadata datasets at scale.
• Citation analysis — rank works and authors by impact.
• Publisher / journal monitoring — track new output by type and date.
• Enrichment — resolve DOIs to full metadata for an existing reference list.

How to scrape Crossref data

1. Add the Crossref Scraper to your Apify account.
2. Enter a query, or leave it blank and browse by filters.
3. Optionally set fromDate/toDate, type, hasAbstractOnly and maxResults.
4. Click Run.
5. Export the dataset as JSON, CSV, Excel or XML, or pull it via the Apify API.

Need more research data?

• arXiv Scraper — preprints with full abstracts and PDF links.
• ClinicalTrials Scraper — study records from the clinical trials registry.
• OpenLibrary Scraper — book metadata, authors, subjects and editions.

FAQ

Do I need an API key or login? No. There's no account, login or API key required. You can optionally add your email via mailto for faster, more reliable access.

How many works can I scrape per run? Set maxResults as high as you need — it scales to hundreds of thousands of records per run, so you can pull an entire topic or date range in one go.

How does billing work? You pay only per work you get, so small filtered runs stay cheap. See the Pricing tab for current rates.

What format is the output? Structured JSON — one record per work — exportable as JSON, CSV, Excel or XML. Each record includes DOI, title, authors with ORCID, journal, publisher, year, citation count, references and (where deposited) an abstract.

Can I filter by date or work type? Yes. Use fromDate/toDate for a publication date range, type to keep only journal-article, book-chapter, dataset, preprint etc., and hasAbstractOnly to return only works that include an abstract.

Is this only public data? Yes. Crossref openly publishes DOI and citation metadata, and this Actor returns only those public records.

Can I connect this to other tools? The Crossref Scraper can be connected with almost any cloud service or web app thanks to integrations on the Apify platform. It works with Make, Zapier, Slack, Airbyte, GitHub, Google Drive and many more, plus the Apify API, JavaScript/Python clients and MCP. Or use webhooks to trigger an action whenever a run finishes.

Related Actors

• arXiv Scraper
• ClinicalTrials Scraper
• OpenLibrary Scraper
• Wikipedia Scraper

Notes

Original clean-room implementation. Returns Crossref's openly available metadata as-is; you are responsible for compliance with Crossref's terms. Not affiliated with or endorsed by Crossref.