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LitFetchR 1.0.0

Major reworking of the retrieval pipeline, consolidating a series of performance, reliability, and data-quality improvements. The exported function interface is unchanged apart from two new optional arguments to save_api_keys() (scp_insttoken and ncbi_api_key), but the returned data frame has changed (see “Output columns” below).

Output columns

• The issue column has been renamed to number. Code that referred to the output column by the name issue must be updated.
• Added pages and isbn columns to the output of all three extractors.
• The returned data frame is now a consistent 12 columns across Web of Science, Scopus, and PubMed: author, year, title, journal, volume, number, abstract, doi, pages, isbn, source, platform_id.

Performance

• Web of Science and Scopus extractors no longer make individual per-record API calls. All metadata is now extracted directly from the batch search responses, greatly reducing the number of API requests and the time per run.
• PubMed record details are now fetched in batches of 200 PMIDs per call instead of one call per record.
• Replaced row-by-row rbind accumulation with list collection and a single combine in all three extractors.
• Removed a redundant save-and-reread of history_id.xlsx during extraction.

API keys and authentication

• The Scopus API key is now sent as the X-ELS-APIKey request header instead of a URL query parameter, matching Elsevier’s current requirements.
• Added optional support for a Scopus institutional token. Set it with save_api_keys(scp_insttoken = "..."); when present it is sent as the X-ELS-Insttoken header on all Scopus requests. Some institutional subscriptions require it.
• save_api_keys() can now save an optional NCBI/PubMed API key with save_api_keys(ncbi_api_key = "..."), which enables a higher PubMed request rate. Previously this key had to be added to .Renviron by hand.

Reliability and error handling

• Rate-limit responses (HTTP 429) are now retried in a dedicated loop that respects the Retry-After header.
• Authentication failures (HTTP 401/403) now fail immediately with a clear diagnostic message instead of retrying.
• Every request now has a 60-second timeout.
• PubMed requests now respect NCBI rate limits, using a faster rate when the optional ncbi_api_key environment variable is set.
• create_save_search() now uses the same retrying HTTP helper as the extractors rather than bare requests.
• The list of already-seen record IDs is now saved only after extraction succeeds, so an interrupted run no longer marks records as fetched.
• Search strings containing = are now parsed correctly from search_list.txt.
• Fixed handling of searches that return zero results in all three extractors.

Data quality

• Superscript/subscript markup (<sup>/<inf> tags) is now stripped from Scopus and Web of Science titles and abstracts while preserving their content (e.g. 10<sup>2</sup> becomes 102), matching Scopus’ own export format. Bare < and > used as mathematical operators (e.g. p < 0.05) are preserved.
• Web of Science extraction now handles more record types correctly: DIIDW patents (inventors, year, and Derwent abstract), multi-language abstracts from CSCD/KJD/SCIELO (preferring the English variant), and BCI/ZOOREC book-chapter journal titles. Italic terms in CABI titles and abstracts are reconstructed in place, and the article URL is used as a fallback when no DOI is available.

History files

• Per-run timestamped sheets in the history files have been replaced with append-only log sheets, keeping a single growing record instead of one sheet per run.

LitFetchR 0.2.2

• Fixes bug in manual_fetch(): removed a chunk of code that was calling ‘scp_api_key’ before it was created in the internal function extract_scp_list(). (see github issue https://github.com/thomasdumond/LitFetchR/issues/2#issue-4259003613)

LitFetchR 0.2.1

CRAN release: 2026-02-10 * Added ‘directory’ arguments to functions creating files so users can choose in which directory they are created.

• Added option to choose which literature platform to access when creating the search string using create_save_search() function.

• Information messages can now be suppressed, if needed, using the function suppressMessages().

• This was the first version

LitFetchR 0.2.0

• New data extraction strategy improving quality and consistency.

LitFetchR 0.1.1

• Deduplication of references using ASySD made optional.

• Added an option to choose or not the automatic opening of the references after each retrieval.

LitFetchR 0.1.0

• Initial GitHub upload.

These binaries (installable software) and packages are in development.
They may not be fully stable and should be used with caution. We make no claims about them.