BIS Central Bank Research PDF Scraper

Scrapes publication metadata and optionally extracts full PDF text from the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) research library. Covers six publication series: BIS Working Papers, Quarterly Reviews, Annual Economic Reports, BCBS Standards, CPMI Papers, and Statistical Bulletins.

What it does

The actor queries BIS's internal document-list API to retrieve all publications in your selected series, then fetches detailed metadata (authors, abstracts, JEL codes, publication type) for each item. Optionally, it downloads and parses the PDF for full-text extraction using pdf-parse (born-digital PDFs, no OCR cost).

Use cases

• Macro research — track every BIS Working Paper on a given JEL code (e.g. E52 for monetary policy)
• Basel III / IV compliance monitoring — stay current on BCBS standards and consultation papers
• CPMI fintech intelligence — monitor payments-infrastructure publications
• Literature review automation — build structured datasets of abstracts, authors, and JEL codes at scale

Input

Field	Type	Description	Default
series	array	Publication series to scrape. Options: working_papers, quarterly_review, annual_economic_report, bcbs_standards, cpmi, statistics_bulletin	["working_papers", "quarterly_review", "bcbs_standards"]
yearFrom	integer	Filter publications from this year (inclusive)	2024
yearTo	integer	Filter publications up to this year (inclusive)	2024
jelCodeFilter	string	Filter Working Papers by JEL code prefix (e.g. E52, G21). Case-insensitive. Applies to Working Papers only.	—
extractPdfText	boolean	Download and extract full PDF text. Adds ~3–5s per item. Default off.	false
maxItems	integer	Maximum records to return across all series (0 = unlimited)	15

Output

Each record in the dataset contains:

Field	Description
document_id	BIS document identifier (e.g. work1238, d225)
series	Publication series key
title	Document title
authors	Comma-separated author names
publication_date	ISO date (YYYY-MM-DD)
jel_codes	Comma-separated JEL classification codes (Working Papers)
abstract	Plain-text abstract
pdf_url	Direct PDF download URL
committee	Originating committee (BIS, BCBS, CPMI)
publication_type	BIS publication type string
topics	Comma-separated research topic tags
pdf_pages	Page count
full_text	Full extracted PDF text (only when extractPdfText: true)

Example: JEL-filtered Working Papers

{
  "series": ["working_papers"],
  "yearFrom": 2022,
  "yearTo": 2024,
  "jelCodeFilter": "E52",
  "extractPdfText": false,
  "maxItems": 50
}

Returns all Working Papers classified under E52 (Monetary Policy) published 2022–2024.

Notes

• PDF extraction uses pdf-parse locally — no third-party OCR service is called for born-digital BIS PDFs (all sampled BIS documents are born-digital).
• A 500ms courtesy delay is applied between API calls to avoid rate-limiting BIS servers.
• The BIS publishes ~100–150 Working Papers per year; full backfills of all six series yield approximately 2,800 items total.