| name | semantic-scholar |
| description | Use when the user wants to query Semantic Scholar for paper metadata, citations, references, author profiles, or semantic literature search results. |
Semantic Scholar
Overview
Queries the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph API for paper metadata, citations, references, author profiles, and semantic search. High-coverage index of 200M+ papers across all scientific fields with structured, machine-readable data.
When to Use
- User wants paper metadata (abstract, authors, year, venue, citation count) by title or DOI
- User asks for papers citing or referenced by a specific work
- User wants to find papers by a specific author or lab
- Semantic search over a topic when PubMed/arXiv coverage is insufficient
- Need structured data for building citation graphs or lit review databases
Key Capabilities
- Search by keyword, title, author, or fieldsOfStudy
- Retrieve full citation and reference lists per paper
- Author profiles with h-index, citation count, affiliated institution
- Batch lookups by DOI, arXiv ID, or S2 paper ID
- Semantic similarity search (embedding-based, not just keyword)
- Open access PDF links where available
- TLDRs: auto-generated 1–2 sentence summaries per paper
Usage Examples
Search for papers on a topic
s2.search(
query="few-shot learning protein structure prediction",
fields=["title", "authors", "year", "citationCount", "tldr"],
limit=20
)
Get papers citing a specific work
s2.get_citations(
paper_id="arXiv:1706.03762",
fields=["title", "year", "authors"],
limit=50
)
Author profile lookup
s2.get_author(
name="Yoshua Bengio",
fields=["hIndex", "citationCount", "papers"]
)
Batch DOI lookup
s2.batch_lookup(
ids=["DOI:10.1038/...", "DOI:10.1101/..."],
fields=["title", "abstract", "tldr", "openAccessPdf"]
)
Output Format
Returns structured JSON with paper metadata. TLDRs are available for most papers published after 2018. OpenAccessPdf field provides direct PDF URL when available.
Best Paired With
related_work_scout for metadata, citations, and reference chasing
Notes
- API key optional but recommended for higher rate limits (100 req/5min vs 10 req/5min)
- Register free at https://www.semanticscholar.org/product/api
- fieldsOfStudy filter supports: "Computer Science", "Biology", "Medicine", "Physics", etc.
- For bulk exports >10k papers, use the S2 Dataset releases instead of API
