Universitat de Barcelona PhD Vacancy Scraper

Fetch PhD and doctoral-programme calls from Universitat de Barcelona, parsed into clean records by an AI extraction step (BYO Anthropic or Mistral key).

Bring your own key. This Actor uses either Claude (Anthropic) or Mistral for AI extraction — pick with provider. Pass anthropicApiKey (provider "anthropic", default) or mistralApiKey (provider "mistral") in the input (or set ANTHROPIC_API_KEY/MISTRAL_API_KEY in the run's environment). Without a matching key the run fails immediately with a clear error message; it never silently succeeds with 0 items.

AI provider: Anthropic vs Mistral

provider selects which AI does discovery + extraction:

• anthropic (default) — a Claude agent uses Anthropic's built-in web-search and web-fetch tools to browse UB's pages and follow one promising link.
• mistral — UB's pages carry no bot protection, so this path fetches them directly with plain HTTP (no search-engine detour needed), follows a few links whose anchor text/URL look vacancy-related (vacanc, phd, doctoral, predoctoral, convocat, beca, etc.), then ONE Mistral call extracts structured postings from the combined fetched text.

Output shape and the no-guessing extraction rules (never fabricate deadline, only include genuine open vacancies) are identical either way.

What Universitat de Barcelona PhD data does this scraper extract?

Each result is one flat JSON record per job posting:

Field	Meaning
id	Stable source-side identifier (the posting URL where available)
title	Job title / thesis topic as posted
company	Always "Universitat de Barcelona"
location	Always "Barcelona, Spain"
url	Direct link to the posting
postedAt	Posting date where the source states it, else null
deadline	Application/thesis deadline where the source states it, else null
snippet	Short description excerpt
source	Always "ub_doctoral"

How to scrape Universitat de Barcelona PhD with this Actor

1. Click Try for free / Run — no login to the target site, no cookies, no proxies to configure.
2. Adjust the input (postedSince, maxItems) or keep the defaults — just remember to supply your own anthropicApiKey.
3. Run it and export the dataset as JSON, CSV or Excel, or read it over the API.

Run it from your own code:

from apify_client import ApifyClient

client = ApifyClient("<YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN>")
run = client.actor("nomad-agent/ub-doctoral-scraper").call(run_input={"maxItems": 50})
for item in client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).iterate_items():
    print(item["title"], "—", item["company"], item["url"])

Or a single HTTP call that runs the Actor and returns items in one response:

curl -X POST \
  "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/nomad-agent~ub-doctoral-scraper/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=<YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN>" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"maxItems": 50}'

Input

Field	Type	Default	Notes
provider	string	"anthropic"	Which AI provider runs discovery + extraction: "anthropic" (Claude + built-in web search/fetch) or "mistral" (direct page fetch + Mistral extraction).
anthropicApiKey	string	—	Required when provider is "anthropic". Your Anthropic API key (sk-ant-...). Can also be set via the ANTHROPIC_API_KEY environment variable. Anthropic bills usage on this key to your own Anthropic account, separately from Apify's charges below.
mistralApiKey	string	—	Required when provider is "mistral". Your Mistral API key. Can also be set via the MISTRAL_API_KEY environment variable. Mistral bills usage on this key to your own Mistral account, separately from Apify's charges below.
mistralModel	string	"mistral-small-latest"	Mistral model for extraction (provider "mistral" only): mistral-small-latest (default — matches larger models on this small, well-scoped task), mistral-medium-latest, or mistral-large-latest.
maxItems	integer	12	Maximum number of PhD vacancies to return (0 = no limit, capped internally at 50 for cost safety). Each returned vacancy is billed as one Apify result, and every run also consumes AI-provider tokens billed to your own key.
postedSince	string (date)	—	Only return vacancies posted on or after this date. Vacancies whose posted date can't be read are still included, not silently dropped. Leave empty to disable the filter.
model	string	"claude-haiku-4-5-20251001"	(Advanced) Claude model to use for scraping. A fast, low-cost model is recommended.

Output example

{
  "id": "https://web.ub.edu/en/doctoral-vacancies/physics-complex-systems",
  "title": "PhD Position — Complex Systems, Department of Physics",
  "company": "Universitat de Barcelona",
  "location": "Barcelona, Spain",
  "url": "https://web.ub.edu/en/doctoral-vacancies/physics-complex-systems",
  "postedAt": "2026-06-18",
  "deadline": "2026-07-31",
  "snippet": "The doctoral programme in Physics invites applications for a funded predoctoral contract on complex systems modelling...",
  "source": "ub_doctoral"
}

postedAt and deadline are null when the source page doesn't state them — never an empty string.

Pricing

Pay per event: $0.05 per Actor start and $0.004 per job returned. 100 jobs ≈ $0.45. No subscription, no rental — you pay only for what you fetch.

Bring-your-own-key cost: this Actor calls the AI provider you pick (provider) using your own anthropicApiKey or mistralApiKey. That provider bills usage (web search/page fetches + model tokens) directly to your own account — separately from, and in addition to, the Apify charges above. Apify has no visibility into or control over that cost; check Anthropic's or Mistral's own pricing for the model you select.

Integrations

Export results as JSON, CSV or Excel from the dataset; call this Actor from Make, Zapier or n8n; run it programmatically with run-sync-get-dataset-items; or use it from AI agents through the Apify MCP server.

Use cases

• PhD-alert bots for Spain/Catalonia
• Academic aggregation boards
• Doctoral-programme deadline tracking
• Research-career consulting

FAQ

Is it legal to scrape Universitat de Barcelona PhD? This Actor reads only publicly available job postings — data any visitor can see without logging in. No personal data behind authentication is touched. Review the target site's terms and your local regulations for your specific use case.

Do I need an account on the target site? No. Postings are fetched from public pages/APIs — no login, cookies or session tokens.

How fresh is the data? Every run fetches live listings directly from UB's pages via Claude's web search — there is no caching, so each run reflects what's on the site right now.

How many jobs can I get? maxItems caps the run (0 = no explicit limit, internally capped at 50 for cost safety). This is a single-institution source, so most runs return well under that.

Something broken or missing? Open an issue on the Actor's Issues tab — it is monitored and reliability fixes ship fast.

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