n8n Workflow: Google Scholar Scraper with Groq, CrossRef & Sheets

Turn an n8n chat message into a deduplicated research paper list in Google Sheets

This n8n workflow takes a research topic from your chat input, automatically generates optimized Google Scholar queries with Groq, fetches results via SerpApi, enriches missing DOIs using Crossref, and appends the final papers to Google Sheets.

What this workflow does

• Receives a research title/description as an n8n chat message.
• Generates multiple Scholar queries using Groq (Llama 3.1), returning structured JSON that can be executed reliably.
• Searches Google Scholar through SerpApi for each query, applying a publication date filter (2018–2025), then flattens organic results into a single list.
• Enriches metadata by extracting DOI and year when available; for items missing a DOI, it looks up the DOI in Crossref by title (with a short wait between requests).
• Deduplicates results by removing duplicates based on the paper link.
• Appends final fields to Google Sheets: query, title, authors, year, link, abstract/snippet, DOI, and DOI URL.

Use cases

• Build a repeatable “literature scan” workflow for SaaS operators—start from a topic and produce a shareable sheet of relevant papers.
• Help automation engineers generate structured research datasets for downstream processing (tagging, reviewing, or analytics).
• Maintain an up-to-date bibliography by running Scholar searches for specific projects and collecting enriched DOI information.

Technical details

• Groq for query generation and parsing (Llama 3.1).
• SerpApi to run Google Scholar searches (ensure your plan supports the Google Scholar engine).
• Crossref API DOI enrichment, including a required User-Agent email via the mailto:your@email.com header.
• Workflow nodes include: if, set, code, wait, merge, and sticky note.

Setup: add Groq, SerpApi, Crossref header configuration, and Google Sheets OAuth2 credentials, then set the spreadsheet ID and target sheet.