| name | scholar-workflow |
| description | Use when the user asks you to search, retrieve, or reason about scholarly sources — papers, patents, books, or standards — guides tool selection, chaining, and cross-domain workflows. |
Working effectively with scholarly sources
When the user asks about academic literature, prior art, citations, patents,
books, or standards, use the scholar-mcp tools as described below. The server
covers four source domains: papers, patents, books, and
standards. Each domain has its own tools, but they cross-reference
naturally — a paper may cite a patent, a patent's NPL section may reference a
paper, and a paper with an ISBN is automatically enriched with book metadata.
Choosing the right search entry point
| User intent | Tool | Key parameters |
|---|
| Find papers on a topic | search_papers | query, year_start/year_end, fields_of_study, venue, min_citations, sort |
| Look up a specific paper | get_paper | identifier — DOI, S2 ID, ARXIV:id, ACM:id, PMID:id |
| Find an author's work | get_author | Numeric S2 author ID for profile, or name string for disambiguation |
| Find patents | search_patents | query, cpc_classification, applicant, inventor, jurisdiction, date filters |
| Look up a specific patent | get_patent | patent_number, sections (biblio, claims, description, family, legal, citations) |
| Find books | search_books | Prefer title/author over query — dedicated indexes give better recall |
| Look up a book by ISBN | get_book | identifier — ISBN-10, ISBN-13, OL work ID, or edition ID |
| Find a standard | search_standards | query, optional body filter (NIST, IETF, W3C, ETSI) |
| Normalise a messy citation | resolve_standard_identifier | raw — e.g. "rfc9000", "nist 800-53", "wcag 2.2" |
| Resolve a mixed list of IDs | batch_resolve | identifiers — mix of DOIs, S2 IDs, patent numbers, ISBN: prefixed ISBNs |
Domain-sticky traversal: a paper's references mostly point to other
papers; a patent's family members are other patents; a standard often cites
other standards. Follow the domain naturally — don't switch tools mid-chain
unless the data leads you there (e.g. a patent's NPL citations resolve to
papers).
Literature search strategies
Broad survey
search_papers with a broad query. Use sort="citations" and
min_citations to surface influential work quickly.- Pick the most relevant hit and call
get_citations to see who built on it.
- Call
get_references on the same paper to see what it builds on.
- If the topic spans disciplines, use
fields_of_study to split searches
(e.g. search once for "Computer Science", once for "Medicine").
Targeted lookup
- When the user gives a DOI, arXiv ID, or other identifier, go straight to
get_paper. Don't search first.
- For author-centric queries,
get_author with a name returns up to 5
disambiguation candidates. Ask the user to pick before fetching
publications — don't guess.
Patent prior art
search_patents with keywords, CPC codes, or applicant names.get_patent with sections=["biblio", "citations"] — the citations
section includes NPL references automatically resolved to S2 papers.get_citing_patents finds patents that cite a given paper (coverage is
incomplete — EPO OPS does not capture all citations).
Standards lookup
resolve_standard_identifier handles messy input ("rfc 9000",
"NIST SP 800-53 rev5") and normalises to canonical form. Use it first when
the user gives an informal name.get_standard with fetch_full_text=true downloads and converts the
standard via docling (requires SCHOLAR_MCP_DOCLING_URL). This may block
until conversion completes; it only returns a task ID if rate-limited.
Citation graph traversal
Forward and backward citations
get_citations — papers that cite a given paper (forward). Supports year,
field, and minimum citation count filters.get_references — papers cited by a given paper (backward).- Both return paginated results. Use
offset for additional pages.
BFS graph expansion
get_citation_graph does breadth-first expansion from 1–10 seed papers.
depth 1 is usually sufficient for a neighbourhood view. Depth 2–3
expands rapidly — always set max_nodes to cap growth.direction="both" finds the densest cluster but doubles API calls per hop.
Use "citations" or "references" when the user has a clear direction.- Combine with
year_start/year_end and min_citations to keep results
focused. When filters are active, the tool fetches more candidates per node
to compensate for filtering losses.
Bridge papers
find_bridge_papers finds the shortest citation path between two papers.
Useful for connecting seemingly unrelated work. Searches up to max_depth
hops (default 4). Use direction="both" for best coverage.
Recommendations
recommend_papers takes 1–5 positive paper IDs and optional negative IDs.
The positive examples define the topic; negatives steer away from unwanted
areas. For best results, pick positive examples that span the desired topic
rather than clustering around one sub-area.
recommend_books takes a subject string (e.g. "machine learning", "algorithms")
and returns popular books from Open Library sorted by edition count.
Citation generation
generate_citations produces BibTeX, CSL-JSON, or RIS for up to 100 papers.
enrich=true (the default) adds OpenAlex venue metadata for more complete
BibTeX entries (journal names, volumes, pages).- Unresolved paper IDs are included in the output with a "not found" note
rather than silently dropped.
Enrichment
- Book enrichment is automatic: any paper with an ISBN in
externalIds
gets a book_metadata field (publisher, edition, cover URL, subjects)
from Open Library. No extra tool call needed.
enrich_paper adds OpenAlex fields (affiliations, funders, OA status,
concepts) on demand. Useful when the user needs institutional or funding
context beyond what S2 provides.
Full-text retrieval and PDF conversion
PDF tools are write-tagged and hidden in read-only mode (the default). The
user must set SCHOLAR_MCP_READ_ONLY=false and have a running docling-serve
instance (SCHOLAR_MCP_DOCLING_URL) for Markdown conversion.
Papers
fetch_paper_pdf downloads the PDF with automatic fallback: S2 open-access
→ ArXiv → PubMed Central → Unpaywall.fetch_and_convert does fetch + convert in one call — usually what users
want.fetch_pdf_by_url handles arbitrary PDF URLs (e.g. an author's website).convert_pdf_to_markdown converts a local PDF file to Markdown — use this
when you already have the PDF on disk (e.g. a paywalled paper obtained
manually). Accepts an absolute file_path.
Patents
fetch_patent_pdf downloads via authenticated EPO OPS. Not all patents
have PDFs available (older patents, some WO publications).
Standards
get_standard with fetch_full_text=true fetches and converts in one call.
VLM enrichment
Pass use_vlm=true to fetch_and_convert, fetch_pdf_by_url,
fetch_patent_pdf, or convert_pdf_to_markdown for better formula and figure
extraction. (get_standard uses docling internally but does not expose the VLM
flag.) Requires SCHOLAR_MCP_VLM_API_URL and SCHOLAR_MCP_VLM_API_KEY.
VLM and standard conversions are cached separately — switching modes never
overwrites previous results.
Handling queued operations
PDF downloads (fetch_paper_pdf), patent PDF fetches (fetch_patent_pdf),
full pipeline runs (fetch_and_convert), URL-based fetches (fetch_pdf_by_url),
local file conversions (convert_pdf_to_markdown), and any tool that hits a
rate limit return a task ID when work is submitted to the background queue.
Cache hits return immediately without queuing. Example queued response:
{"queued": true, "task_id": "abc123", "tool": "..."}
Poll with get_task_result(task_id="abc123"). The response includes
status, elapsed_seconds, and a hint while running.
list_tasks shows all active tasks. Don't poll in a tight loop — tasks
typically complete in 10–30 seconds (PDF download) or 1–5 minutes (PDF
conversion with VLM).
Do not
- Do not call
search_papers when the user gives a specific identifier —
use get_paper directly.
- Do not call
get_author with a name and then silently pick the first
candidate — ask the user to disambiguate.
- Do not set
depth > 2 in get_citation_graph without also setting a
tight max_nodes cap — the graph expands exponentially.
- Do not use
fetch_pdf_by_url for EPO OPS patent URLs — they require
authentication. Use fetch_patent_pdf instead.
- Do not forget
batch_resolve when the user gives a mixed list of
identifiers — it routes each to the correct backend automatically.
