Europe PMC Database

A skill for searching, downloading, and exploring open-access papers from Europe PMC, a comprehensive, free life-science literature database with over 43 million abstracts and 9 million full-text articles.

Prerequisites

1. uv: Read the uv skill and follow its Setup instructions to ensure uv is installed and on PATH.
2. User Notification: If .licenses/literature_search_europepmc_LICENSE.txt does not already exist in the workspace root directory then (1) prominently notify the user to check the terms at https://europepmc.org/ and to always check the license of the papers retrieved by the skill for any restrictions, then (2) create the file recording the notification text and timestamp.

Core Rules

• Open Access Only: This skill exclusively searches open-access content. The script automatically appends OPEN_ACCESS:y to every search query. Do NOT remove or override this filter.
• NEVER run python3 or python3 -c directly: the system Python does not necessarily have all key dependencies. Do not attempt to pip install or create new venvs.
• Use the Wrapper: ALWAYS use the provided script rather than calling the API directly. The script handles rate limiting (1 req/s) and errors.
• Output Files: All subcommands require --output to write results to a file. Read the output file separately to avoid context overflow.
• List Sources. If this skill is used, ensure this is mentioned in the output AND list the URLs of all papers that were used in producing the output.

Utility Scripts

All commands are subcommands of scripts/europepmc_api.py. Rate limiting and retries are handled automatically.

1. Search (search)

Search Europe PMC by query. Supports DOI lookup, keyword search, author search, PMID lookup, and the full Europe PMC search syntax.