node-scholarly

A Node.js/TypeScript library to retrieve author and publication information from Google Scholar in a friendly way without having to solve CAPTCHAs.

This is a 100% feature-complete Node.js port of the Python scholarly package, providing full functionality for JavaScript/TypeScript projects. See COMPARISON_REPORT.md for detailed feature comparison.

Installation

npm install node-scholarly

Features

Core Features

• 🔍 Search for authors by name or keywords
• 📚 Search for publications by query
• 👤 Retrieve detailed author profiles
• 📄 Get publication details and citations
• 🔗 Find related articles and cited-by information
• 🌐 Support for proxy services (free proxies, ScraperAPI, Luminati)
• 📊 Access journal rankings and metrics
• 📖 Export citations in BibTeX format
• 🔄 Fully asynchronous API with TypeScript support

Advanced Features (v1.1.0+)

• ✅ Per-publication public access tracking - Identify which papers comply with public access mandates
• ✅ Funding mandate details - Extract agency, policy URLs, effective dates, embargo periods, and grant IDs
• ✅ Extended coauthors lists - Fetch complete coauthor lists (>20) with automatic "View All" detection
• ✅ Full feature parity with Python scholarly package

Quick Start

import { scholarly } from 'node-scholarly';

// Search for an author
async function searchAuthor() {
  const searchQuery = scholarly.searchAuthor('Steven A Cholewiak');
  
  // Get first result
  for await (const author of searchQuery) {
    console.log(author);
    
    // Fill in author details
    const filledAuthor = await scholarly.fill(author);
    scholarly.pprint(filledAuthor);
    
    break; // Just get first result
  }
}

// Search for publications
async function searchPublications() {
  const searchQuery = await scholarly.searchPubs('Machine Learning');
  
  let pub = await searchQuery.next();
  if (pub) {
    console.log(pub);
    
    // Get full publication details
    const filledPub = await scholarly.fill(pub);
    scholarly.pprint(filledPub);
    
    // Get BibTeX citation
    const bibtex = await scholarly.bibtex(filledPub);
    console.log(bibtex);
  }
}

searchAuthor();
searchPublications();

Verifying Scholar IDs

To verify that a Google Scholar ID fetches the correct papers, use the included verification tool:

node examples/verify-scholar-id.js YOUR_SCHOLAR_ID

Example:

node examples/verify-scholar-id.js JE_m2UgAAAAJ

This will:

• ✅ Verify the Scholar ID is valid
• ✅ Fetch author information
• ✅ Show top 5 most cited papers
• ✅ Show 5 most recent papers
• ✅ Confirm papers are being fetched correctly

API Reference

Searching

searchAuthor(name: string)

Search for authors by name.

const authors = scholarly.searchAuthor('Albert Einstein');
for await (const author of authors) {
  console.log(author.name, author.affiliation);
}

searchKeyword(keyword: string)

Search for authors by a single keyword.

const authors = scholarly.searchKeyword('machine learning');
for await (const author of authors) {
  console.log(author);
}

searchKeywords(keywords: string[])

Search for authors by multiple keywords.

const authors = scholarly.searchKeywords(['machine learning', 'neural networks']);
for await (const author of authors) {
  console.log(author);
}

searchPubs(query: string, options?)

Search for publications.

const pubs = await scholarly.searchPubs('quantum computing', {
  patents: false,
  citations: true,
  yearLow: 2020,
  yearHigh: 2024,
  sortBy: 'date'
});

let pub = await pubs.next();
while (pub) {
  console.log(pub.bib.title);
  pub = await pubs.next();
}

searchAuthorId(id: string, filled?, sortby?, publicationLimit?)

Get author by Google Scholar ID.

// Get author with basic info only
const author = await scholarly.searchAuthorId('JE_m2UgAAAAJ');

// Get author with all details filled
const filledAuthor = await scholarly.searchAuthorId('JE_m2UgAAAAJ', true);

// Get author with publications sorted by date, limited to 50
const authorByDate = await scholarly.searchAuthorId('JE_m2UgAAAAJ', true, 'date', 50);

scholarly.pprint(authorByDate);

Filling Details

fill(object: Author | Publication, sections?, sortby?, publicationLimit?)

Fill in complete details for an author or publication.

// Fill author with all details
const filledAuthor = await scholarly.fill(author);

// Fill only specific sections
const partialAuthor = await scholarly.fill(author, ['basics', 'indices', 'counts']);

// Fill author publications sorted by citations (default)
const authorWithPubs = await scholarly.fill(author, ['publications'], 'citedby', 20);

// Fill author publications sorted by date (most recent first)
const authorByDate = await scholarly.fill(author, ['publications'], 'date', 20);

Available sections for authors:

• basics - name, affiliation, interests
• indices - h-index, i10-index, etc.
• counts - citations per year
• coauthors - list of co-authors
• publications - list of publications
• public_access - public access mandates info

Available sort options for publications:

• 'citedby' - Sort by number of citations (default, most cited first)
• 'year' - Sort by publication year (most recent first)
• 'date' - Alias for 'year'
• 'pubdate' - Alias for 'year'

⚠️ Important: Multiple Fill Calls

Once a section is filled, subsequent fill() calls for the same section will be skipped. If you need to fetch publications with different sort orders, fetch the author separately for each operation:

// ❌ WRONG - Second fill() will be skipped!
const author = await scholarly.searchAuthorId('ABC123');
const byCitations = await scholarly.fill(author, ['publications'], 'citedby', 6);
const byDate = await scholarly.fill(author, ['publications'], 'date', 6); // Skipped!

// ✅ CORRECT - Fetch author separately for each sort order
const authorForCited = await scholarly.searchAuthorId('ABC123');
const byCitations = await scholarly.fill(authorForCited, ['publications'], 'citedby', 6);

const authorForRecent = await scholarly.searchAuthorId('ABC123');
const byDate = await scholarly.fill(authorForRecent, ['publications'], 'date', 6);

Citations and Related

citedby(publication: Publication)

Get publications that cite the given publication.

const citations = await scholarly.citedby(publication);
let citation = await citations.next();
while (citation) {
  console.log(citation.bib.title);
  citation = await citations.next();
}

getRelatedArticles(publication: Publication)

Get related articles for a publication.

const related = await scholarly.getRelatedArticles(publication);
let article = await related.next();
while (article) {
  console.log(article.bib.title);
  article = await related.next();
}

bibtex(publication: Publication)

Get BibTeX citation for a publication.

const bibtex = await scholarly.bibtex(publication);
console.log(bibtex);

Organizations and Journals

searchOrg(name: string)

Search for organizations.

const orgs = await scholarly.searchOrg('MIT');
console.log(orgs);

searchAuthorByOrganization(orgId: number)

Get authors from an organization.

const authors = scholarly.searchAuthorByOrganization(12345);
for await (const author of authors) {
  console.log(author);
}

getJournals(category?, subcategory?, includeComments?)

Get journal rankings.

const journals = await scholarly.getJournals('Engineering & Computer Science', 'Artificial Intelligence');
console.log(journals);

Utilities

pprint(object: Author | Publication)

Pretty print an author or publication.

scholarly.pprint(author);
scholarly.pprint(publication);

Using Proxies

To avoid getting blocked by Google Scholar, it's recommended to use proxies:

Free Proxies (Not Recommended for Production)

import { scholarly, ProxyGenerator } from 'node-scholarly';

const pg = new ProxyGenerator();
// Note: Free proxies are unreliable and slow
scholarly.useProxy(pg);

ScraperAPI (Recommended)

import { scholarly, ProxyGenerator } from 'node-scholarly';

const pg = new ProxyGenerator();
await pg.ScraperAPI('YOUR_SCRAPER_API_KEY');
scholarly.useProxy(pg);

Luminati (Bright Data)

import { scholarly, ProxyGenerator } from 'node-scholarly';

const pg = new ProxyGenerator();
await pg.Luminati('username', 'password', 22225);
scholarly.useProxy(pg);

Single Proxy

import { scholarly, ProxyGenerator } from 'node-scholarly';

const pg = new ProxyGenerator();
await pg.SingleProxy('http://proxy.example.com:8080');
scholarly.useProxy(pg);

Configuration

Set Timeout

scholarly.setTimeout(10000); // 10 seconds

Set Retries

scholarly.setRetries(10);

TypeScript Support

This library is written in TypeScript and provides full type definitions:

import { Author, Publication, Journal } from 'node-scholarly';

const author: Author = await scholarly.searchAuthorId('EmD_lTEAAAAJ');
const publication: Publication = await scholarly.searchSinglePub('Machine Learning');

Examples

See the examples/ directory for more detailed examples:

• basic-usage.ts - Basic search and retrieval
• with-proxy.ts - Using proxies
• citations.ts - Working with citations
• journals.ts - Getting journal rankings

Limitations

• Google Scholar may block requests if too many are made without proxies
• CAPTCHAs may appear and require manual intervention
• Some features may not work without a premium proxy service

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please feel free to submit a Pull Request.

License

This project is released under the Unlicense, keeping with the spirit of the original Python scholarly package.

Acknowledgments

This is a Node.js/TypeScript port of the Python scholarly package. All credit for the original design and implementation goes to the scholarly-python-package team.

Citation

If you use this library in academic work, please cite the original scholarly package:

@software{cholewiak2021scholarly,
  author = {Cholewiak, Steven A. and Ipeirotis, Panos and Silva, Victor and Kannawadi, Arun},
  title = {{scholarly: Simple access to Google Scholar authors and citation using Python}},
  year = {2021},
  doi = {10.5281/zenodo.5764801},
  license = {Unlicense},
  url = {https://github.com/scholarly-python-package/scholarly},
  version = {1.5.1}
}