scholarly
Simple access to Google Scholar authors and citations
Decision gist · record as of 2026-08-14
Yes, if you need programmatic access to Google Scholar data and can manage proxy configuration. The package is actively developed, has no known vulnerabilities, and carries a permissive license. However, expect to invest time in proxy setup (required for heavy queries) and be aware that the last PyPI release is from early 2023, so test compatibility with your use case before relying on it in production.AI-flagged interpretation of the facts on this page — verify before relying
Before you install
- Google Scholar actively blocks scrapers; queries like citedby() and search_pubs() will trigger IP blocking unless you configure a proxy via ProxyGenerator before making requests.
- Low friction installation with a pure-Python wheel and 12 runtime dependencies.
- The package is actively maintained with a recent commit on 2026-03-24, though the latest release on PyPI dates to 2023-01-16, creating a gap between development activity and published versions.
License · maintenance · safety
Unlicense (permissive) — Released under the Unlicense, a permissive public-domain-equivalent license that places no restrictions on use, modification, or redistribution—suitable for any project type.
last release 2023-01-16 (1306 days) · last repo commit 2026-03-24 · 1,879 stars
0 known vulnerabilities (OSV.dev, 2026-08-14) · 363,971 downloads/mo, #7,213 on PyPI
Alternatives
Verify before relying
pip install scholarly
from scholarly import scholarly
search_query = scholarly.search_author('Steven A Cholewiak')
first_author = next(search_query)
author = scholarly.fill(first_author)
print(author['publications'])- Whether the 1306-day gap since the 2023-01-16 release indicates maintenance slowdown or stable API compatibility.
- Current reliability of free-proxy and fake-useragent dependencies for evading Google Scholar's anti-bot measures.
- Whether Tor support (deprecated since v1.5) is still functional or should be avoided.
What it is and what it does
scholarly is a Python scraper that queries Google Scholar to retrieve author profiles, publication records, and citation metadata in a programmatic, dictionary-based format. It handles the mechanics of web requests, HTML parsing, and result iteration so you can focus on the academic data rather than HTTP details.
The package wraps requests, httpx, beautifulsoup4, and bibtexparser to extract structured fields like author names, publication titles, citation counts, and venue information. It includes proxy support via free-proxy and fake-useragent to work around Google Scholar's rate-limiting and IP blocking, though the documentation warns that certain query types (like citedby and search_pubs) will trigger blocking without proxies. Tor support exists but is deprecated and unsupported.
Use it for
- Build a researcher profile aggregator that collects publication lists and citation metrics from Google Scholar for a list of author names.
- Extract bibliographic data from Scholar search results to populate a local academic database or bibliography tool.
- Track citation counts and related papers for a specific publication to monitor its academic impact over time.
- Automate literature review workflows by scraping Scholar results for papers matching a research topic.
- Generate citation networks by querying who has cited a particular paper and extracting their metadata.
Worth the install?
AI-flagged interpretation of the facts on this page. Verify before relying on it.
Yes, if you need programmatic access to Google Scholar data and can manage proxy configuration.
The package is actively developed, has no known vulnerabilities, and carries a permissive license. However, expect to invest time in proxy setup (required for heavy queries) and be aware that the last PyPI release is from early 2023, so test compatibility with your use case before relying on it in production.
Install
scholarly on PyPI
Before you install
Low friction installation with a pure-Python wheel and 12 runtime dependencies. The package is actively maintained with a recent commit on 2026-03-24, though the latest release on PyPI dates to 2023-01-16, creating a gap between development activity and published versions.
Google Scholar actively blocks scrapers; queries like citedby() and search_pubs() will trigger IP blocking unless you configure a proxy via ProxyGenerator before making requests.
License in practice
Released under the Unlicense, a permissive public-domain-equivalent license that places no restrictions on use, modification, or redistribution—suitable for any project type.
Quickstart
pip install scholarly
from scholarly import scholarly
search_query = scholarly.search_author('Steven A Cholewiak')
first_author = next(search_query)
author = scholarly.fill(first_author)
print(author['publications'])Verify before relying
- Whether the 1306-day gap since the 2023-01-16 release indicates maintenance slowdown or stable API compatibility.
- Current reliability of free-proxy and fake-useragent dependencies for evading Google Scholar's anti-bot measures.
- Whether Tor support (deprecated since v1.5) is still functional or should be avoided.
Package facts
| License | Unlicense permissive |
| Python support | Not specified |
| Install friction | Low. Pure-Python wheel |
| Runtime dependencies | 12 packagesarrowbeautifulsoup4bibtexparserdeprecatedfake-useragentfree-proxyhttpxpython-dotenvrequestsseleniumsphinx-rtd-themetyping-extensions |
| Maintenance | Actively maintained 1,306 days since the last release |
| Last repo commit | |
| First released | |
| Downloads | 363,971 / month, #7,213 on PyPI 30-day window, as of 2026-08-14 |
| Known vulnerabilities | None known OSV.dev, checked 2026-08-14 |
| Classifiers | Development Status :: 3 - AlphaIntended Audience :: DevelopersIntended Audience :: Science/ResearchNatural Language :: EnglishOperating System :: OS IndependentProgramming Language :: Python :: 3Topic :: Software Development :: Libraries :: Python Modules |
Evidence: scholarly-1.7.11-py3-none-any.whl
Tags
Let your AI agent find packages like this
Example. Real query, live index.
You found this page by searching. An agent finds it by wishing: SkillFed indexes 14,416 PyPI packages by what they can do, searchable in plain language.
wish › “google scholar scraping python”
- scholarlyscholarly retrieves author profiles, publication metadata, and…
- semanticscholarProvides a typed Python client for querying Semantic Scholar's…
- googlesearch-pythonScrapes Google search results by sending HTTP requests and parsing…
Give your agent the search over MCP, or paste the wish link into any chat.
More Python Modules packages
Converts domain names between Unicode and ASCII-compatible encoding (Punycode) according to IDNA 2008 and Unicode Technical Standard 46, with security validation and broader script coverage than the standard library.
Install it if you work with internationalized domain names, need to validate domains, or use HTTP clients that depend on it transitively.
Setuptools is a Python build backend and package management tool that handles building, distributing, and installing Python packages, including support for C/C++ extension modules.
PyYAML parses and emits YAML 1.1 data format, enabling serialization and deserialization of configuration files and Python objects to and from human-readable YAML text.
Pydantic validates Python data structures against type hints, coercing and checking input at runtime to ensure it matches a declared schema.
Provides reusable metadata objects for use with PEP-593 `typing.Annotated` to express common constraints like bounds, collection sizes, and predicates on types.
Install it if you use or build libraries that need to express type constraints in a standardized, inspectable way—or if you want to annotate your own types with…
Provides runtime tools to inspect and introspect Python type annotations, enabling programmatic examination of type hints at execution time.
See also semanticscholar · pyalex · habanero · pyzotero · trafilatura · google-search-results · eyecite · pybtex-docutils · googlesearch-python · oxylabs