Automated Academic Paper Metadata & Variable Extraction with Gemini to Google Sheets

📚In the social and behavioral sciences (e.g., psychology, sociology, economics, management), researchers and students often need to normalize academic paper metadata and extract variables before any literature review or meta-analysis.

🧩This workflow automates the busywork. Using an LLM, it processes CSV/XLSX/XLS files (exported from WoS, Scopus, EndNote, Zotero, or your own spreadsheets) into normalized metadata and extracted variables, and writes a neat table to Google Sheets. 🔗 Example Google Sheet: click me

👥 Who is this for?

🎓 Undergraduate and graduate students or researchers in soft-science fields (psychology, sociology, economics, business) ⏱️ People who don’t have time to read full papers and need quick overviews 📊 Anyone who wants to automate academic paper metadata normalization and variable extraction to speed up a literature review ⚙️ How it works 📤 Upload an academic paper file (CSV/XLSX/XLS) in chat. 📑 The workflow creates a Google Sheets spreadsheet with two tabs: Checkpoint and FinalResult. 🔎 A structured-output LLM normalizes core metadata (title, abstract, authors, publication date, source) from the uploaded file and writes it to Checkpoint; 📧 a Gmail notification is sent when finished. 🧪 A second structured-output LLM uses the metadata above to extract variables (Independent Variable, Dependent Variable) and writes them to FinalResult; 📧 you’ll get a second Gmail notification when done.

🛠️ How to set up 🔑 Credentials Google Sheets OAuth2** (read/write) Gmail OAuth2** (send notifications) Google Gemini (or any LLM you prefer)** 🚀 Quick start Connect Google Sheets, Gmail, and Gemini (or your LLM) credentials. Open File Upload Trigger → upload your CSV/XLSX/XLS file and type a name in chat (used as the Google Sheets spreadsheet title). Watch your inbox for status emails and open the Google Sheets spreadsheet to review Checkpoint and FinalResult. 🎛 Customization 🗂️ Journal lists: Edit the Journal Rank Classifier code node to add/remove titles. The default list is for business/management journals—swap it for a list from your own field. 🔔 Notifications: Replace Gmail with Slack, Teams, or any channel you prefer. 🧠 LLM outputs: Need different metadata or extracted data? Edit the LLM’s system prompt and Structured Output Parser.

📝 Note 📝 Make sure your file includes abstracts. If the academic paper data you upload doesn’t contain an abstract, the extracted results will be far less useful. 🧩 CSV yields no items? Encoding mismatches can break the workflow. If this happens, convert the CSV to .xls or .xlsx and try again.

📩 Help Contact: owenlzyxg@gmail.com