Enrich DOIs in Google Sheets with Crossref API (n8n Workflow)

Enrich your pending DOIs in Google Sheets using the Crossref API—automatically

This n8n workflow reads DOIs marked as “Pending” in Google Sheets, fetches publication metadata from the Crossref REST API, and appends a clean success or failure record (including title, authors, journal, abstract, and status) back to an output tab—batch by batch.

What this workflow does

• Starts manually when you click Execute in n8n.
• Reads DOI rows from your input Google Sheets tab and filters to only rows where Status = “Pending”.
• Processes DOIs in batches and calls the Crossref REST API for each DOI.
• Validates lookup success by checking whether the Crossref response indicates a successful match.
• Formats a normalized output record:
  • On success: includes publication metadata (title, authors, journal, abstract) and a processing status.
  • On failure: writes a standardized failure record when the DOI is missing or the API call fails.
• Appends results to an output Google Sheets tab and waits 2 seconds between items to help reduce API rate-limit risk.

Use cases

• Automatically enrich DOI lists for citation management or research databases stored in Google Sheets.
• Maintain an audit trail of successful vs. failed DOI lookups for ongoing dataset cleanup.
• Reduce manual metadata entry by enriching DOIs as soon as they’re added and marked “Pending.”

Technical details

• Integrations/nodes: if, set, code, filter, http request, and Google Sheets.
• Crossref API: uses the Crossref REST API and recommends setting your own User-Agent email (replace mailto:research@example.com with your contact email).
• Google Sheets setup: create an n8n service account credential and share the spreadsheet with the service account email; update the spreadsheet ID and input/output tab names.