📖 Crossref DOI Metadata Scraper

🚀 Extract citation metadata for 155M+ DOIs from Crossref in seconds. Search by query, filter by title, author, or DOI. No coding, no API keys required.

Pull structured records from Crossref DOI Metadata — clean fields ready as CSV, JSON, JSONL, Excel, or XML for downstream pipelines.

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parseforge/crossref-scraper on Apify. Call: ApifyClient("TOKEN").actor("parseforge/crossref-scraper").call(run_input={...}), then client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).list_items().items for results. Key inputs: maxItems (integer, default 10), query (string, default "attention is all you need"), queryTitle (string), queryAuthor (string), filter (string), doi (string). Full actor spec: fetch build via GET https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/parseforge~crossref-scraper (Bearer TOKEN). Get token: https://console.apify.com/account/integrations

Crossref is the largest DOI registration agency, indexing over 155 million research papers, book chapters, conference proceedings, datasets, and preprints. This scraper connects to the Crossref Works API and returns structured citation metadata including titles, authors, publication dates, journals, DOIs, citation counts, abstracts, license information, and funding details. Whether you need metadata for a single DOI or want to search across the entire Crossref database, the scraper handles pagination and rate limiting automatically.

Researchers, librarians, and data analysts use this actor to build citation databases, verify publication records, analyze research trends, and enrich existing datasets with DOI metadata. Instead of querying the Crossref API manually and parsing JSON responses, you get clean, structured data exported as JSON, CSV, or Excel. Every record includes the full title, all authors with ORCID IDs when available, journal name, volume, issue, pages, publication date, license, funder information, and reference lists.

🎯 Target Audience	💡 Use Cases
Academic researchers	Build citation databases for literature reviews
University librarians	Verify and enrich publication records
Bibliometric analysts	Analyze citation patterns and research impact
Data scientists	Enrich datasets with DOI metadata
Publishers	Track citations and references across journals
Grant managers	Verify publication records from funded research

📋 What the Crossref Scraper does

• 🔍 Free-text search across titles, authors, and container titles in the 155M+ DOI database
• 📝 Title-specific search to find publications matching exact title keywords
• 👤 Author search to find all works by a specific researcher
• 🎯 Single DOI lookup to fetch full metadata for a specific publication
• 🔧 Filter strings to narrow results by type, date, ORCID, publisher, and more
• 📧 Polite pool access by providing an email for faster Crossref response times

The scraper queries the Crossref Works API, retrieves matching records, and extracts full citation metadata for each item. Results include the publication title, all authors (with ORCID IDs), journal or container title, volume, issue, pages, publication dates, DOI, license info, funder details, reference count, citation count, and direct links. Each record is timestamped and includes the content type (journal-article, book-chapter, etc.).

💡 Why it matters: Crossref's API returns complex nested JSON that requires parsing. This scraper flattens and normalizes the data, delivering clean records ready for spreadsheets, databases, or analysis tools. Add your email to get routed to Crossref's faster "polite pool."

📊 Data fields

Each record includes: abstract, alternativeIds, articleNumber, authors, clinicalTrials, containerTitle, createdDate, depositedDate, doi, doiUrl, funders, indexedDate, isReferencedByCount, isbn, issn, issue, language, license, licenseStart, licenseUrl, orcids, page, primaryUrl, publishedIssued, publishedOnline, publishedPrint, publisher, referenceCount, referencesCount, score, scrapedAt, shortContainerTitle, subjects, subtitle, title, type, url, volume. All 38 field names come from a real production run, so what you see here is what lands in your dataset.

⚠️ Good to Know: Providing an email address routes your requests to Crossref's "polite pool," which has faster response times and higher rate limits. The filter field accepts Crossref filter syntax. See Crossref API docs for all available filter options.

🚀 How to use

1. Create an Apify account - Sign up free with $5 credit
2. Open the Crossref DOI Metadata Scraper - Navigate to the actor page on Apify
3. Enter your search query - Type keywords, an author name, or a specific DOI
4. Add optional filters - Set date range, publication type, or provide your email for faster responses
5. Click Start - The actor collects matching records and delivers structured citation data

⏱️ A typical run with 10 records completes in under 30 seconds.

🔗 Recommended Actors

Actor	Description
PubMed Citation Scraper	Extract publication metadata from PubMed for biomedical research
OpenCitations Scraper	Collect citation networks and bibliographic metadata
Open Library Scraper	Search and download book data from the Internet Archive
NASA Reports Scraper	Collect technical reports from NASA's NTRS database
ROR Scraper	Collect research organization data from the Research Organization Registry

💡 Pro Tip: Combine the Crossref Scraper with the PubMed Scraper to get both citation metadata and full biomedical abstracts for the same publications.

Disclaimer: This actor is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to Crossref. It accesses publicly available data through the Crossref Works API. Use responsibly and in accordance with Crossref's Metadata Terms of Use.

🆘 Need Help?

If you hit a bug, have questions about setup, or need a scraper we haven't built yet, open our contact form or write to parseforge@protonmail.com. We also take on paid custom data projects.

For faster answers, join our Discord. It's the best place to get support and suggest new actors.