Academic Paper Search: Crossref, arXiv & PubMed Scraper

Search research papers across the biggest open scholarly databases in one run, and get one clean, merged table:

• Crossref: over 150 million journal articles, books and conference papers with DOIs and citation counts.
• arXiv: preprints in AI, computer science, physics, math, biology and economics, with free PDFs.
• PubMed: biomedical and life-science literature with abstracts and MeSH topics.
• OpenAlex (optional): 250+ million works. Bring your own free API key.

For every paper you get title, authors, publication date and year, journal or venue, publisher, DOI link, abstract, citation count, open-access status, PDF or full-text link, topics and source IDs (PMID, PMCID, arXiv ID). The same paper found in several databases is merged into one row.

Who is it for?

• Researchers and students: run literature reviews and systematic searches in minutes and export to Excel or Zotero-friendly CSV.
• AI and RAG builders: collect abstracts and open PDFs on any topic for embeddings, chatbots and summarizers.
• Pharma, biotech and healthcare: monitor new PubMed papers on drugs, diseases and targets with a scheduled run.
• R&D, analysts and consultants: map who publishes what, in which journals, and how influential it is.
• Science writers: find the most cited and newest papers on a subject.

How to use it

1. Enter a search query, e.g. large language models or crispr gene therapy. Every word must match, so results stay on topic.
2. Pick sources (Crossref, arXiv and PubMed are on by default).
3. Optionally set years, open access only, and sort by relevance, date or citations.
4. Click Start and export to Excel, CSV or JSON.

Tip: schedule a weekly run with Newest first to get alerts for new papers on your topic.

Input example

{
  "query": "crispr gene therapy",
  "sources": ["crossref", "arxiv", "pubmed"],
  "maxResultsPerSource": 50,
  "fromYear": 2022,
  "sortBy": "citations",
  "openAccessOnly": false
}

Output example

{
  "source": "pubmed",
  "title": "Large Language Models in Medicine: Applications, Challenges, and Future Directions",
  "authors": ["Erlan Yu", "Xuehong Chu", "Wanwan Zhang", "Xiangbin Meng", "..."],
  "publishedDate": "2025-01-01",
  "year": 2025,
  "venue": "International journal of medical sciences",
  "doi": "10.7150/ijms.111780",
  "doiUrl": "https://doi.org/10.7150/ijms.111780",
  "url": "https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40520893/",
  "pdfUrl": "https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12163604/",
  "isOpenAccess": true,
  "citationCount": null,
  "abstract": "In recent years, large language models (LLMs) represented by GPT-4 have...",
  "type": "journal article",
  "topics": ["Humans", "Natural Language Processing", "Large Language Models"],
  "externalIds": { "pmid": "40520893", "pmcid": "PMC12163604" }
}

How much does it cost?

Pay-per-event: a small fee per paper returned plus a tiny per-run start fee, with no subscription and no separate platform usage costs. For example, 1,000 papers cost about $2. Duplicates merged across sources count once. Set Maximum cost per run to cap your spending.

Good to know

• Citation counts come from Crossref and OpenAlex. arXiv and PubMed don't provide them.
• Some publishers don't share abstracts with Crossref. Turn on Only papers with an abstract if you need them.
• arXiv and PubMed limit request speed, so very large searches take a little longer.

Use it through the API, integrations or AI agents

Run it from the Apify API, on a schedule, or connect it to Make, Zapier, n8n or Google Sheets. AI agents can call it through the Apify MCP server to find and cite real papers.

FAQ

Is it legal? It uses the official, free public APIs of Crossref, arXiv, PubMed (NCBI) and OpenAlex, which are made for exactly this kind of use.

Can I download the full PDFs? The pdfUrl field links to free full text when it's available (all arXiv papers, PubMed Central and open-access journals).

Found a bug or want another source? Open an issue. We usually reply within 24 hours.

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