🎓 Crossref Scientific Papers & DOI Citations Scraper

Extract peer-reviewed scholarly literature, DOI citations, academic authors, journal titles, and publisher metadata across 150M+ registered publications from the official Crossref database.

---

🥊 Why This Actor Beats the Competition

Feature	🎓 This Crossref Scraper	🐢 Google Scholar Web Scrapers	🐌 Publisher Paywalls
Speed	250+ papers / min (Direct REST)	10–15 papers / min (Captchas)	Slow manual navigation
Pricing	$1.20 / 1,000 papers (PPR)	High proxy & compute costs	Expensive subscriptions
Data Cleanliness	Official DOI, ISSN, Citations	Unstructured HTML parsing	Inconsistent format
Platform Usage	FREE (Zero compute charges)	Heavy CPU / RAM bills	N/A
Reliability	100% (Official Crossref API)	Frequent Cloudflare / 403 blocks	Manual research friction

---

🛠️ Step-by-Step: How to Use

Method 1: Apify Console (No-Code UI)

1. Open the actor in Apify Console.
2. Enter your Search Query (e.g. quantum computing, crispr therapeutics, transformer models).
3. Set Max Papers to Extract (e.g. 50).
4. Click Start to run and download results in JSON or CSV.

Method 2: Python SDK

from apify_client import ApifyClient

client = ApifyClient("YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN")
run_input = {
    "query": "artificial intelligence large language models",
    "maxItems": 25
}
run = client.actor("litezero/crossref-research-citations-scraper").call(run_input=run_input)
for item in client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).iterate_items():
    print(item["title"], item["doi"], "Citations:", item["citationCount"])

Method 3: Node.js SDK

import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

const client = new ApifyClient({ token: 'YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN' });
const run = await client.actor('litezero/crossref-research-citations-scraper').call({
    query: 'graph neural networks',
    maxItems: 25,
});
const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
console.log(items);

---

📥 Input Parameters

Parameter	Type	Default	Description
query	String	"artificial intelligence neural networks"	Academic search query or keyword.
maxItems	Integer	20	Max publications to extract.
filterYear	String	""	Optional publication year filter (e.g. 2024).

---

📤 Output Data Dictionary & Sample

{
  "doi": "10.1016/j.neunet.2023.11.021",
  "title": "Deep learning architectures for multimodal sensor fusion",
  "authors": ["Alexander Vance", "Elena Rostova", "Marcus Chen"],
  "publisher": "Elsevier BV",
  "journal": "Neural Networks",
  "type": "journal-article",
  "publishedDate": "2024-02-15",
  "citationCount": 42,
  "doiUrl": "https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neunet.2023.11.021",
  "issn": ["0893-6080"],
  "scrapedAt": "2026-10-04T05:40:00.000Z"
}

---

💡 Top Use Cases

1. AI RAG & Vector Database Ingestion: Ingest thousands of authoritative peer-reviewed papers into Pinecone, Qdrant, or Weaviate for specialized AI assistants.
2. Academic & Research Citation Velocity: Monitor emerging research trends, citation spikes, and influential authors in cutting-edge scientific fields.
3. Patent Prior-Art Discovery: Cross-reference patent claims against academic literature to substantiate IP novelty.