ROR Scraper - Research Organisations & Locations

Scrape the Research Organization Registry in bulk. Extract organisation name, aliases, type, status, country, city, coordinates, website, Wikipedia link and established year to CSV/JSON. No API key.

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What does the ROR Scraper do?

This Actor turns any ROR search into a structured dataset. You give it by name or by country, it walks the result pages one after another, and it writes one clean row per organisation into your dataset — ready to export as JSON, CSV or Excel, or to pull straight from the Apify API.

The Research Organization Registry is the open, keyless directory of the world's research institutions. The Actor reads its REST API directly, so names, locations, coordinates and web domains all arrive structured — which is what makes it usable as a targeting list rather than a reference table. Pagination is followed automatically until it runs out of results, hits your page limit or hits your Max items cap, whichever comes first. Every row is de-duplicated across the whole run, so you are never billed twice for the same organisation.

There is no API key, no login and no browser involved. That keeps runs fast and cheap, and it means you can schedule the Actor without worrying about credentials expiring.

Who is it for?

• B2B sales teams selling software or equipment into universities and institutes.
• Partnership and grants teams mapping potential collaborators by country.
• Bibliometricians normalising affiliation strings against a canonical registry.
• Developers adding institution lookup to a product.
• Market researchers sizing the research sector in a region.

Use cases

• Export every research organisation in a country as a targeting list.
• Map institutions geographically using the coordinates on each row.
• Filter to a type such as Education, Facility or Company.
• Resolve messy affiliation text against canonical names and aliases.
• Build a canonical institution list for CRM account matching.

Why use this ROR Scraper?

• 🔑 Keyless — no account, no API token, no cookies to paste.
• 📦 16 fields per organisation — everything the result page exposes, already typed.
• 📄 Real pagination — it walks page after page instead of returning the first screen.
• 🎯 Precise caps — Max items stops the run exactly where you want it, so the bill is predictable.
• 📊 Export anywhere — JSON, CSV, Excel or HTML, plus the Apify API and integrations.
• 💸 Pay per result — you pay for rows you actually receive, with no platform fees to calculate.

What data can you extract?

Every run produces one row per organisation, with these fields:

Field	Type	Description
rorId	string	ROR identifier URL
name	string	Primary organisation name
aliases	string	Alternative names, separated by a pipe
types	string	Organisation types, separated by a pipe
status	string	Registry status, e.g. active
established	number	Year the organisation was established
country	string	Country name
countryCode	string	Two-letter country code
city	string	City
latitude	number	Latitude
longitude	number	Longitude
website	string	Official website
wikipediaUrl	string	Wikipedia page when linked
query	string	Search term this row came from
page	number	Result page the organisation appeared on
scrapedAt	string	ISO timestamp of extraction

Output example

{
  "aliases": "UKK Institute",
  "city": "Tampere",
  "country": "Finland",
  "countryCode": "FI",
  "established": 1980,
  "latitude": 61.49911,
  "longitude": 23.78712,
  "name": "Urho Kaleva Kekkonen Institute",
  "page": 1,
  "query": "institute",
  "rorId": "https://ror.org/05ydecq02",
  "scrapedAt": "2026-09-17T08:44:41.713Z",
  "status": "active",
  "types": "healthcare",
  "website": "https://www.ukkinstituutti.fi/",
  "wikipediaUrl": null
}

How to use

Option A — by name

{
  "maxItems": 400,
  "maxPagesPerSearch": 20,
  "searchTerms": [
    "university"
  ]
}

1. Open the Actor and fill in the name field.
2. Set Max pages per search and Max items to bound the run.
3. Click Start, then export from the Output tab.

Option B — by country

{
  "countryCode": "TR",
  "maxItems": 400,
  "maxPagesPerSearch": 20,
  "searchTerms": []
}

Paste one or more ROR URLs into Start URLs and the Actor paginates each of them independently.

Input parameters

Parameter	Type	Default	Description
searchTerms	array	–	Name fragments to search, e.
countryCode	string	``	Two-letter code to restrict the run, e.
maxPagesPerSearch	integer	5	How many result pages to walk for each search.
maxItems	integer	100	Stop after this many organisations.
maxConcurrency	integer	2	Parallel requests.
proxyConfiguration	object	{"useApifyProxy": true}	Proxy used to fetch pages.

Tips for best results

• Search by name fragment, or filter by country to export a whole national sector.
• The API returns about 20 organisations per page, so plan page counts accordingly.
• website and aliases are what make this usable for account matching and affiliation cleanup.
• types separates universities from hospitals, companies and government facilities.
• Coordinates are published for nearly every record, so the output maps directly.
• aliases is what makes affiliation matching work — keep it when deduplicating.
• established is empty for many organisations; that is a gap in the registry, not extraction.
• Schedule a quarterly run; the registry changes slowly.
• Keep concurrency low — ROR is a free community service.
• Pair with the website contact scraper to enrich each institution's domain.
• The registry defines a domains field but leaves it empty on nearly every record, so it is not included.

Integrations

Send results straight into the tools you already use: Google Sheets, Slack, Zapier, Make, Airtable or any Webhook. You can also schedule the Actor to run hourly, daily or weekly and have each run append to the same dataset, which is how you build a price or availability history rather than a one-off snapshot.

API usage

Run the Actor and collect results from any language. Replace <YOUR_TOKEN> with your Apify API token.

cURL

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/logiover~ror-research-org-scraper/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=<YOUR_TOKEN>" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"maxItems": 400, "maxPagesPerSearch": 20, "searchTerms": ["university"]}'

Node.js

import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

const client = new ApifyClient({ token: '<YOUR_TOKEN>' });
const run = await client.actor('logiover/ror-research-org-scraper').call({"maxItems": 400, "maxPagesPerSearch": 20, "searchTerms": ["university"]});
const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
console.log(items);

Python

from apify_client import ApifyClient

client = ApifyClient('<YOUR_TOKEN>')
run = client.actor('logiover/ror-research-org-scraper').call(run_input={"maxItems": 400, "maxPagesPerSearch": 20, "searchTerms": ["university"]})
for item in client.dataset(run['defaultDatasetId']).iterate_items():
    print(item)

Use with AI agents (MCP)

This Actor is available through the Apify MCP server, so an AI agent can call it as a tool. Point your agent at https://mcp.apify.com and it can run the ROR Scraper on demand — for example: "Pull the first 500 organisations from ROR and summarise the price distribution." The agent receives the same structured rows you would get from the UI.

FAQ

Do I need a ROR account or API key?

No. The Actor reads publicly available pages only. There is nothing to authenticate and no credentials to rotate.

How many organisations can I get in one run?

As many as the search exposes. Raise Max pages per search and Max items together; the run stops at whichever limit it reaches first.

Why did I get fewer rows than I asked for?

The search ran out of organisations. That is normal for narrow queries — broaden the search or add more searches to one run.

Are results de-duplicated?

Yes. Each organisation is emitted once per run, even when it appears on several pages, so you are never billed twice for the same record.

Why are some fields empty?

ROR does not publish every attribute for every organisation. Empty means the source did not show it, not that extraction failed.

What export formats are supported?

JSON, CSV, Excel, HTML and RSS from the Output tab, plus the Apify API and any integration you connect.

How fast is it?

It is pure HTTP with no browser, so a page of results typically takes a second or two. Raise Max concurrency carefully — the source rate-limits aggressive crawling.

Can I schedule it?

Yes. Use the Apify scheduler to run it on any interval and append each run to the same dataset for time-series analysis.

Does it work behind a proxy?

It uses Apify Proxy automatically. You can switch groups or supply your own proxies in Proxy configuration.

How often does the data change?

ROR updates continuously. Re-run whenever you need current data; the Actor always reads the live pages, never a cache.

Is the output schema stable?

Yes. Field names and types are fixed, so downstream pipelines will not break between runs.

What if the site changes its layout?

Open an issue on the Issues tab and it gets fixed. The Actor is actively maintained.

Is it legal?

This Actor reads only publicly available pages on ROR — the same content any visitor sees without logging in. It does not bypass authentication, does not collect private data and does not attempt to defeat access controls. You are responsible for how you use the output: respect the source's terms of service, applicable copyright, and data-protection law such as GDPR where personal data is involved. Scraping public data is generally lawful in the EU and the US, but the responsibility for the downstream use of that data sits with you.

Related scrapers

• GLEIF Scraper — Legal entity registry
• Website Contact Scraper — Enrich domains with contacts
• OpenAlex Scraper — Institution-linked works
• Crossref Scraper — Affiliation metadata