Journal Meta — Paper Metadata Lookup Skill

中文

A Claude Code skill that turns a single paper identifier — DOI, PMID, arXiv id, OpenAlex id, or title — into one complete metadata record: title, full author list, first author, corresponding author(s), publication date, journal name + ISO-4 abbreviation, impact factor, volume/issue/pages, DOI/PMID, citation count, and abstract.

Workflow

Why

Field	Native Claude Code	Journal Meta
Title / authors / date / venue	Guessed from memory	Resolved from OpenAlex (+ Crossref fallback)
First author	Ambiguous	author_position == first
Corresponding author	Not available	OpenAlex is_corresponding (never guessed)
Journal abbreviation	Manual guessing	Delegated to journal-abbrev (ISO-4, ~25K journals)
Impact factor	Not available	Delegated to journal-if (curated JCR)
Batch of DOIs/PMIDs	Not supported	batch file.txt

How it works

1. OpenAlex (free, no key) resolves the identifier and supplies nearly every field, including the corresponding-author flag. Crossref is a fallback for DOIs OpenAlex hasn't indexed yet.
2. The journal name is enriched by delegating to two sibling skills when they are installed:
   • journal-abbrev → ISO-4 abbreviation.
   • journal-if → curated JCR impact factor.
   • Fallbacks (AbbrevISO, OpenAlex 2-year mean citedness) kick in automatically if those skills aren't found. meta.sources always tells you which was used.

Usage

# From a DOI
python3 journal_meta.py "10.1038/s41586-020-2649-2"

# From a PMID / arXiv id / title
python3 journal_meta.py 32939066
python3 journal_meta.py 1706.03762
python3 journal_meta.py "Attention is all you need"

# A list, one identifier per line
python3 journal_meta.py batch papers.txt

# Skip enrichment, or force JSON
python3 journal_meta.py <id> --no-if --no-abbrev
python3 journal_meta.py <id> --format json

Output is a human key-value view on a TTY and a stable JSON envelope when piped. meta.sources records the provenance of the abbreviation and impact factor.

Configuration

Env var	Effect
JOURNAL_META_MAILTO / OPENALEX_MAILTO	Email for OpenAlex's polite pool (recommended).
JOURNAL_ABBREV_CLI	Explicit path to journal-abbrev's jabbrv.py.
JOURNAL_IF_CLI	Explicit path to journal-if's journal_if.py.

Caveats

• Corresponding author relies on OpenAlex's is_corresponding flag, which is only present when the publisher supplied it — an empty list means "not marked," not "none." The skill never infers one.
• Impact factor from journal-if is the curated JCR value; the fallback is an OpenAlex approximation and is labelled as such in impact_factor_source.
• Title search returns OpenAlex's single top hit; prefer a DOI or PMID for the version of record.

Requirements

• Python 3 (standard library only — no third-party packages).
• Optional but recommended: the journal-abbrev and journal-if skills installed alongside this one for curated abbreviations and impact factors.

Works with: Claude Code and any coding agent that can run a Python CLI.

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👤 Author

Agents365-ai

• GitHub: https://github.com/Agents365-ai
• Bilibili: https://space.bilibili.com/441831884

📄 License

CC BY-NC 4.0 — Free for non-commercial use. Commercial use requires permission.