PMC Open Access Search

Welcome!

Explore open access scientific literature from PubMed Central (PMC). This tool helps you find freely available full-text articles.

Enter keywords above, choose your preferred sorting, and hit Search!

How It Works

1. Enter search term(s) (e.g., covid vaccine efficacy) and optionally select sort order.
2. The tool queries NCBI ESearch for matching open access article IDs (PMCIDs).
3. It uses NCBI EFetch to retrieve the full metadata and abstract/body XML for those articles.
4. Result titles are displayed. Click a title to expand and view the extracted abstract, body sections (if available), and links. All formatting (italics, bold) is removed to show plain text.
5. A JSON API is also available for programmatic access (provides plain text).

API Usage

Access search results programmatically via JSON. Make a GET request to this script's URL with the following query parameters:

• q: Your URL-encoded search query (e.g., crispr+cas9). (Required)
• format=json: Specifies JSON output. (Required)
• sort: Optional. Set to date for newest first, or relevance (default if omitted).

Example Request (Relevance Sort):

http://experimentaldata.co.uk/ncbi_search/?q=nanoparticle+drug+delivery&format=json

Example Request (Newest First):

http://experimentaldata.co.uk/ncbi_search/?q=crispr+cas9&sort=date&format=json

The JSON response includes query details, errors (if any), and an array of `results`. Each result object contains extracted fields like `title`, `authors`, `journal`, `year`, `pmcid`, `pmid`, `doi`, `abstract`, and structured `sections` from the article body (all as plain text).

FAQ & Notes

Q: Why only Open Access articles?
A: This ensures the full text content is legally available for retrieval and processing via the NCBI E-utilities API used by this script.

Q: Why does some content look basic or incomplete (e.g., missing tables/figures)?
A: Parsing complex XML from scientific articles into simple HTML is challenging. This script focuses on extracting textual content (titles, authors, abstract, paragraphs, section headings, lists) as plain text, removing all formatting. Tables and figures are currently represented by placeholders indicating their labels and captions.

Q: What's the result limit?
A: The script currently fetches a maximum of 20 results per search (`retmax=20`) to balance usefulness with performance and courtesy to the NCBI API.

Q: What about API Rate Limits?
A: NCBI E-utilities have usage limits (typically around 3 requests/second without an API key, 10/second with one). Heavy use without a key might lead to temporary blocks. If you plan frequent use, get a free NCBI API key and add it to the `NCBI_API_KEY` constant at the top of the script.

Note: The script aims to extract plain text content, removing formatting like italics or bold. If you see unexpected characters or slightly awkward spacing, it might be due to the conversion from complex XML structures or special characters.