README-NOT.md
In ropensci/bmc: Search the BiomedCentral API and get full text articles.

An R interface to BMC search API and full text XML

API DOCS: http://www.biomedcentral.com/about/api

No API key is required to use the BMC API.

install.packages("devtools")
devtools::install_github("ropensci/bmc")

library("bmc")

out <- bmc_search(terms = 'fire', limit=2)
out@results$entries[[1]]
#> $arxId
#> [1] "s12960-015-0005-7"
#> 
#> $blurbTitle
#> [1] ""
...

The object returned from bmc_search is an object of class bmc. The default print gives back a list of length N, where each element has the contents for the article in question. We can inspect further elements of the bmc object with the @ symbol. We can get the urls element...

out@urls
#> [1] "http://www.human-resources-health.com/content/13/1/14"
#> [2] "http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2458/15/302"

...which has the urls you can use to go the paper in a browser

browseURL(out@urls[1])

which opens the paper in your default browser

We can also inspect the ids element, which has a list equal to the number you requested, where each element is of length 2, with a arxId, and a url. These two are used to construct the download url if you use bmc_xml.

out@ids
#> [[1]]
#> [[1]]$arxId
#> [1] "s12960-015-0005-7"
#> 
#> [[1]]$url
#> [1] "http://www.human-resources-health.com/content/13/1/14"
#> 
#> 
#> [[2]]
#> [[2]]$arxId
#> [1] "s12889-015-1630-8"
#> 
#> [[2]]$url
#> [1] "http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2458/15/302"

You can either pass in a url to the uris parameter in the bmc_xml function, or pass in the output of the bmc_search function to bmc_xml using the first parameter obj. First, passing in a url:

uri <- 'http://www.biomedcentral.com/content/download/xml/1471-2393-14-71.xml'
bmc_xml(uris=uri)
#> [[1]]
#> <?xml version="1.0"?>
#> <!DOCTYPE art SYSTEM "http://www.biomedcentral.com/xml/article.dtd">
#> <art>
#>   <ui>1471-2393-14-71</ui>
#>   <ji>1471-2393</ji>
#>   <fm>
#>     <dochead>Research article</dochead>
#>     <bibl>
#>       <title>
...

Now the output from bmc_search()

out <- bmc_search(terms = 'science', limit=5)
dat <- bmc_xml(out)
length(dat)
#> [1] 5

Inspect the xml

dat[[1]]
#> <?xml version="1.0"?>
#> <!DOCTYPE art SYSTEM "http://www.biomedcentral.com/xml/article.dtd">
#> <art>
#>   <ui>s12989-015-0083-7</ui>
#>   <ji>1743-8977</ji>
#>   <fm>
#>     <dochead>Research</dochead>
#>     <bibl>
#>       <title>
#>         <p>Elevated particle number concentrations induce immediate changes in heart rate variability: a panel study in individuals with impaired glucose metabolism or diabetes</p>
...

Once you have XML content, you can go to work with e.g., xpath.

uri <- 'http://www.biomedcentral.com/content/download/xml/1471-2393-14-71.xml'
xml <- bmc_xml(uris=uri)
library("XML")
xpathApply(xml[[1]], "//abs", xmlValue)
#> [[1]]
#> [1] "AbstractBackgroundIn pregnancy, violence can have serious health consequences that could affect both mother and child. In Ghana there are limited data on this subject. We sought to assess the relationship between physical violence during pregnancy and pregnancy outcomes (early pregnancy loss, perinatal mortality and neonatal mortality) in Ghana.MethodThe 2008 Ghana Demographic and Health Survey data were used. For the domestic violence module, 2563 women were approached of whom 2442 women completed the module. After excluding missing values and applying the weight factor, 1745 women remained. Logistic regression analysis was performed to assess the relationship between physical violence in pregnancy and adverse pregnancy outcomes with adjustments for potential confounders.ResultsAbout five percent of the women experienced violence during their pregnancy. Physical violence in pregnancy was positively associated with perinatal mortality and neonatal mortality, but not with early pregnancy loss. The differences remained largely unchanged after adjustment for age, parity, education level, wealth status, marital status and place of residence: adjusted odds ratios were 2.32; 95% CI: 1.34-4.01 for perinatal mortality, 1.86; 95% CI: 1.05-3.30 for neonatal mortality and 1.16; 95% CI: 0.60-2.24 for early pregnancy loss.ConclusionOur findings suggest that violence during pregnancy is related to adverse pregnancy outcomes in Ghana. Major efforts are needed to tackle violence during pregnancy. This can be achieved through measures that are directed towards the right target groups. Measures should include education, empowerment and improving socio-economic status of women."

Please report any issues or bugs.
License: MIT
Get citation information for bmc in R doing citation(package = 'bmc')

This package is part of a richer suite called fulltext, along with several other packages, that provides the ability to search for and retrieve full text of open access scholarly articles. We recommend using fulltext as the primary R interface to bmc unless your needs are limited to this single source.