HAL Open Science Papers Scraper

Scrape HAL (Hyper Articles en Ligne), France's national open archive, for scholarly papers, theses and preprints — complete with authors, research labs, DOIs, keywords and open-access PDF links. No API key, no login.

HAL is run by the CNRS/CCSD and is the mandatory deposit archive for most French universities and research institutions. It is the single best source for French and European research output, including a huge amount of material (theses, conference papers, reports, book chapters) that never reaches the big commercial indexes.

Runs at roughly ~$0.5 per 1,000 papers on the Apify platform.

What you get

Each record (type: "paper"):

Field	Description
hal_id	HAL internal doc id
hal_uri / url	Canonical HAL landing page
title	Paper title
abstract	Abstract (capped at 4000 chars)
authors / author_count	Full author name list
doc_type / doc_type_label	HAL type code + human label (ART = Journal article, COMM = Conference paper, THESE = Thesis, OUV = Book, COUV = Book chapter, ...)
journal	Journal title
doi	DOI when available
produced_date / publication_date	ISO YYYY-MM-DD dates
keywords	Author keywords
labs	Research laboratory / structure names
language	Document language
is_open_access	Whether a free full text exists
pdf_url	Direct PDF link when open access
query, source, scraped_at	Provenance

Input

Field	Type	Description
mode	select	Scraping mode — search (Solr query).
queries	array	Free-text search queries (prefilled ["deep learning","climate change"]).
docTypeFilter	string	Optional HAL docType code, e.g. ART, COMM, THESE.
openAccessOnly	boolean	Only return open-access records (default false).
fromYear	integer	Only papers produced in this year or later.
maxItems	integer	Max papers across all queries (default 200, max 5000).

Example

{
  "mode": "search",
  "queries": ["deep learning", "quantum computing"],
  "docTypeFilter": "ART",
  "openAccessOnly": true,
  "fromYear": 2020,
  "maxItems": 500
}

Use cases

• Research monitoring — track new deposits on any topic across French/EU institutions.
• French / EU literature reviews — surface theses, HDRs and conference papers absent from commercial indexes.
• Open-access harvesting — pull free full-text PDFs at scale via is_open_access + pdf_url.
• Bibliometrics — analyse output by lab (labs), document type, year and open-access status.

How this differs from our other paper scrapers

HAL is a national repository, not a global index — its edge is coverage of French and European research (theses, conference papers, reports, grey literature) with rich laboratory/affiliation metadata. Pick the source that matches your need:

• HAL scraper (this actor) — France's national open archive; strongest for French/EU output, labs and theses.
• Semantic Scholar scraper — large AI-driven global graph with citations and influence metrics.
• CORE scraper — worldwide aggregation of open-access repositories.
• OpenAIRE scraper — EU-funded research graph linking publications, projects and funders.
• Unpaywall scraper — DOI-to-free-PDF lookup across all publishers.

If your interest is French/European scholarship, labs, or theses, HAL is the right starting point; combine it with the others for global reach.

Data source

Public HAL Solr API: https://api.archives-ouvertes.fr/search — free, keyless, maintained by the CCSD.