🏢 ROR Scraper

🚀 Extract research organization data from the Research Organization Registry in seconds. Search by name, filter by status, and collect identifiers. No coding, no API keys required.

🕒 Last updated: 2026-04-16 · 📊 30 fields · 🌍 100,000+ organizations · 🔍 Name search and URL-based collection

The Research Organization Registry (ROR) is the global, community-led registry of research organizations, containing over 100,000 entries covering universities, research institutes, government agencies, healthcare organizations, and funders worldwide. This scraper collects full organization profiles including names, aliases, acronyms, locations (with GPS coordinates), types, external identifiers (GRID, Wikidata, FundRef, ISNI), relationships, establishment dates, and administrative metadata.

Researchers, librarians, grant administrators, and data analysts use this actor to build organization databases, verify institution identifiers, map research networks, and cross-reference organizations across multiple identifier systems. Instead of querying the ROR API manually, you get clean, structured data for up to 1,000,000 organizations per run for paid users. Every record includes the full name, all aliases and acronyms, precise geolocation, country information, organization type, all external IDs, related organizations, and creation/modification timestamps. The data exports as JSON, CSV, or Excel.

🎯 Target Audience	💡 Use Cases
University librarians	Build institution directories with verified identifiers
Grant administrators	Verify organization credentials for funding applications
Bibliometric analysts	Map institutional research networks
Data scientists	Cross-reference organization IDs across databases
Research managers	Track institutional relationships and hierarchies
System integrators	Populate CRM and ERP systems with organization data

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📋 What the ROR Scraper does

• 🔍 Name search to find organizations by name, keyword, or partial match
• 🔗 URL-based collection from any ROR search results page
• 🏷️ Status filtering to show active, inactive, or withdrawn organizations
• 🆔 Multi-identifier extraction for GRID, Wikidata, FundRef, and ISNI
• 📍 Geolocation data with latitude, longitude, city, state, and country
• 👥 Relationship mapping to identify parent, child, and related organizations

The scraper queries the ROR API or website with your search parameters, retrieves matching organization records, and extracts full profiles. Results include the ROR ID, official name, all aliases and acronyms, organization types, website URLs, Wikipedia links, establishment year, GPS coordinates, country and city information, GeoNames ID, all external identifiers (GRID, Wikidata, FundRef, ISNI), related organizations with relationship types, and administrative metadata.

💡 Why it matters: ROR is becoming the standard identifier for research organizations, but collecting data at scale requires API programming. This scraper automates collection and delivers structured organization profiles ready for institutional databases, grant systems, or bibliometric analysis.

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🎬 Full Demo

🚧 Coming soon...

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⚙️ Input

Field	Type	Required	Description
startUrl	string	No	Direct ROR search URL to scrape results from
query	string	No	Search term for organizations (e.g., "university", "research institute")
recordStatus	string	No	Filter by status: active, inactive, or withdrawn
maxItems	integer	No	Max organizations to collect. Free: up to 10. Paid: up to 1,000,000

Example 1: Search with URL

{
  "startUrl": "https://ror.org/search?query=university&filter=active&page=1",
  "maxItems": 50
}

Example 2: Search with filters

{
  "query": "research institute",
  "recordStatus": "active",
  "maxItems": 100
}

⚠️ Good to Know: Use either a Start URL or search filters, not both. If you provide a Start URL, search filters are ignored. The "active" status filter excludes organizations that have been merged, closed, or withdrawn from the registry.

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📊 Output

🧾 Schema

Emoji	Field	Type	Description
🆔	rorId	string	Unique ROR identifier
📝	name	string	Official organization name
🏷️	organizationTypes	array	Classification (education, funder, healthcare, etc.)
🌐	websiteUrl	string	Official website URL
📅	establishedYear	number	Year the organization was established
✅	recordStatus	string	Active, inactive, or withdrawn
📍	countryName	string	Country where the organization is located
🌍	countryCode	string	ISO country code
📍	stateOrProvince	string	State, province, or region
🏙️	city	string	City name
📊	geonamesId	string	GeoNames geographic identifier
📍	latitude	number	GPS latitude coordinate
📍	longitude	number	GPS longitude coordinate
📝	aliases	array	Alternative names for the organization
🏷️	acronyms	array	Abbreviations and acronyms
🔗	gridId	string	GRID identifier
🔗	wikidataId	string	Wikidata identifier
🔗	fundrefId	string	Crossref Funder Registry identifier
👤	isniIds	array	ISNI identifiers
🌐	wikipediaLink	string	Wikipedia page URL
👥	relatedOrganizations	array	Related institutions
🏷️	relationshipType	string	Type of relationship (parent, child, related)
📅	createdDate	string	When the ROR record was created
📅	lastModifiedDate	string	When the record was last updated
📄	schemaVersion	string	ROR schema version
🔐	recordSource	string	Source of the record data
🌐	externalLinks	array	Additional external links
🏷️	labels	array	Names in other languages
⏰	scrapedAt	string	Collection timestamp
⚠️	error	string	Error message if processing failed

📦 Sample records

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✨ Why choose this Actor

Feature	Details
🌍 100,000+ organizations	Access the full ROR registry of research institutions
🆔 Multi-identifier support	GRID, Wikidata, FundRef, and ISNI in one record
📍 Geolocation data	GPS coordinates, city, state, and country for every organization
🏷️ Organization types	Education, funder, healthcare, government, nonprofit, and more
👥 Relationship mapping	Parent, child, and related organization networks
🌐 Multilingual labels	Organization names in multiple languages
📦 Flexible export	JSON, CSV, or Excel output

📊 Collect up to 1,000,000 research organization profiles per run with full identifiers, geolocation, and relationship data.

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📈 How it compares to alternatives

Feature	This Actor	Manual API Queries	Generic Scrapers
Multi-identifier extraction	✅	Manual	❌
GPS coordinates	✅	✅	❌
Relationship mapping	✅	Manual	❌
Bulk collection (1M+ records)	✅	Manual	❌
Structured JSON/CSV output	✅	JSON only	Varies
Status filtering	✅	✅	❌
Scheduled runs	✅	❌	❌

Get structured organization data at scale without writing API code or managing pagination.

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🚀 How to use

1. Create an Apify account - Sign up free with $5 credit
2. Open the ROR Scraper - Navigate to the actor page on Apify
3. Enter a search query or URL - Type an organization name or paste a ROR search URL
4. Set optional filters - Filter by record status (active, inactive, withdrawn)
5. Click Start - The actor collects matching organizations and delivers structured data

⏱️ A typical run with 50 organizations completes in under 1 minute.

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💼 Business use cases

📚 Library Services Build institution directories with verified identifiers Cross-reference organization IDs across catalog systems Maintain up-to-date organization records Map institutional hierarchies for consortia	💰 Grant Administration Verify applicant institution credentials Cross-reference ROR IDs with FundRef records Track organizational changes and mergers Build validated institution databases for grant systems
📊 Bibliometric Analysis Map institutional research collaboration networks Geocode research output by institution location Track organization types across research fields Analyze regional distribution of research institutions	🔧 System Integration Populate CRM systems with research organization data Sync ROR identifiers with internal databases Build autocomplete systems for institution selection Maintain organization master data across platforms

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🔌 Automating ROR Scraper

Integrate the ROR Scraper into your workflow using the Apify API or client libraries.

Node.js:

import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

const client = new ApifyClient({ token: 'YOUR_API_TOKEN' });
const run = await client.actor("parseforge/ror-scraper").call({
  query: "university",
  recordStatus: "active",
  maxItems: 100
});
const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
console.log(items);

Python:

from apify_client import ApifyClient

client = ApifyClient("YOUR_API_TOKEN")
run = client.actor("parseforge/ror-scraper").call(run_input={
    "query": "university",
    "recordStatus": "active",
    "maxItems": 100
})
items = list(client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).iterate_items())
print(items)

• 📖 Apify API reference
• 🐍 Python client docs
• 📦 Node.js client docs

Schedules: Set up recurring runs to track new organizations added to ROR, monitor status changes, or keep your institution database synchronized. Configure weekly or monthly schedules from the Apify Console.

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❓ Frequently Asked Questions

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🔌 Integrate with any app

• 🔗 Make (Integromat) - Connect organization data to Google Sheets, Salesforce, or any of 1,500+ apps
• 🔗 Zapier - Trigger workflows when new organizations are collected
• 🔗 Slack - Get notified when an organization data run completes
• 🔗 Airbyte - Stream organization data into your data warehouse
• 🔗 GitHub - Store organization datasets in repositories for version control
• 🔗 Google Drive - Automatically save CSV exports to shared folders

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🔗 Recommended Actors

Actor	Description
Crossref Scraper	Extract DOI metadata for 155M+ research publications
PubMed Citation Scraper	Extract publication metadata from PubMed for biomedical research
OpenCitations Scraper	Collect citation networks and bibliographic metadata
US Census Bureau Scraper	Extract demographic and economic data from the Census Bureau
Open Library Scraper	Search and download book data from the Internet Archive

💡 Pro Tip: Combine the ROR Scraper with the Crossref Scraper to match organization identifiers with publication metadata and analyze institutional research output.

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🆘 Need Help? Open our contact form and we will get back to you within 24 hours. We are happy to help with custom setups, integrations, or feature requests.

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Disclaimer: This actor is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to the Research Organization Registry (ROR) or its governing organizations. It accesses publicly available data from the ROR registry. Use responsibly and in accordance with applicable terms of service.