Download Google Scholar citation list as a persistent Python dict

download_citations.py

# Note: after downloading ~250 citations further connections might be blocked by Google Scholar.

import time
import shelve

# Make sure to run: pip install scholarly tqdm
from scholarly import scholarly
from tqdm.auto import tqdm

search_query = scholarly.search_author('Piotr Żelasko')  # replace the author
first_author_result = next(search_query)
author = scholarly.fill(first_author_result)

citations = shelve.open("refs", writeback=True)

for publication in tqdm(author["publications"], desc="Publications"):
    title = publication["bib"]["title"]
    if title in citations and publication["num_citations"] == len(citations[title]):
        continue
    current = []
    for citation in tqdm(scholarly.citedby(publication), desc="Citations"):
        current.append(citation)
        time.sleep(0.1)
    citations[title] = current
    citations.sync()