Semantic Scholar MCP Server

An MCP (Model Context Protocol) server for the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph API — 200M+ papers with citation networks, author profiles, and full-text snippet search.

Built with the MCP TypeScript SDK and Zod.

Tools (16 total)

Papers (9 tools)

Tool	Description
paper_search	Search papers by keyword with filtering (year, venue, field, open access, citations, type)
paper_search_bulk	Bulk search with cursor pagination for large result sets (up to 10M)
paper_match	Find the single best match for a known paper title
paper_autocomplete	Autocomplete partial paper titles (up to 10 suggestions)
paper_get	Get full details for a paper by ID (S2 ID, DOI, ArXiv, PMID, etc.)
paper_batch	Retrieve up to 500 papers in a single request
paper_citations	Get papers that cite a given paper (forward citations)
paper_references	Get a paper's reference list (bibliography)
paper_authors	Get author details for a specific paper

Authors (4 tools)

Tool	Description
author_get	Get full author profile (h-index, affiliations, stats)
author_batch	Retrieve up to 1000 author profiles in one request
author_search	Search for authors by name
author_papers	Get all papers by a specific author

Recommendations (2 tools)

Tool	Description
recommendations_for_paper	Get ML-powered paper recommendations for a given paper
recommendations_from_lists	Get recommendations from positive/negative example papers

Snippets (1 tool)

Tool	Description
snippet_search	Search within paper bodies for specific text passages

Setup

1. Get an API key (optional but recommended)

Get a free key at semanticscholar.org/product/api. Without a key, requests are heavily rate-limited.

2. Install and build

cd semanticscholar-mcp-server
npm install
npm run build

3. Add to Claude Desktop

Add this to your claude_desktop_config.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "semantic-scholar": {
      "command": "node",
      "args": ["/path/to/semanticscholar-mcp-server/dist/index.js"],
      "env": {
        "SEMANTICSCHOLAR_API_KEY": "your-api-key"
      }
    }
  }
}

Or if using Claude Code CLI:

claude mcp add semantic-scholar \
  node \
  /path/to/semanticscholar-mcp-server/dist/index.js \
  -e SEMANTICSCHOLAR_API_KEY=your-api-key

Features

• Multiple ID formats: Accepts S2 Paper IDs, DOIs, ArXiv IDs, PMIDs, PMCIDs, CorpusIds
• Markdown or JSON output: Every tool supports response_format: "json" for structured data
• Custom field selection: Override default fields with the fields parameter
• Built-in rate limiting: Token bucket limiter prevents API throttling
• Batch operations: Retrieve up to 500 papers or 1000 authors in a single call

Usage examples

• "Search Semantic Scholar for papers on transformer architectures from 2023"
• "Get recommendations for papers similar to this one"
• "Find the citation network for DOI 10.1038/nature14539"
• "Search for text snippets mentioning 'chain of thought prompting'"
• "Look up author profile for researcher 1741101"

License

MIT