semanticscholar-mcp

Polski

Semantic Scholar Academic Graph API via MCP.

Table of contents

• Tools
• Environment variables
• Wiring it up
• Local run

Tools

Tool	Parameters	Description
search_papers	query, fields, year, venue, fields_of_study, open_access_pdf, min_citation_count, publication_types, limit, offset	Relevance-ranked paper search
search_papers_bulk	query, fields, year, venue, sort, publication_types, fields_of_study, token	Bulk paper search (up to 1000/call, with continuation token)
match_paper_title	query, fields	Find the paper whose title best matches a query
autocomplete_paper	query	Suggest paper title completions
get_paper	paper_id, fields	Details about a single paper
get_papers_batch	paper_ids, fields	Details for up to 500 papers at once
get_paper_authors	paper_id, fields, limit, offset	Authors of a given paper
get_paper_citations	paper_id, fields, limit, offset	Papers that cite a given paper
get_paper_references	paper_id, fields, limit, offset	Papers referenced by a given paper
search_authors	query, fields, limit, offset	Search for authors by name
get_author	author_id, fields	Details about a single author
get_author_papers	author_id, fields, limit, offset	Papers written by a given author
get_authors_batch	author_ids, fields	Details for up to 1000 authors at once
search_snippets	query, paper_ids, fields_of_study, venue, publication_types, insertion_ids, min_citation_count	Search text snippets from paper full texts, abstracts, and titles

All Semantic Scholar API calls are throttled to 1 request per second, cumulative across all tools, per the API's rate limit.

Environment variables

Variable	Required	Description
S2_API_KEY	yes	Semantic Scholar API key, sent as the x-api-key header

Wiring it up

Only requirement: uv (https://docs.astral.sh/uv/). Nothing else to install.

Claude Code

claude mcp add semanticscholar-mcp -e S2_API_KEY=<value> -- uvx --from git+https://github.com/dam2452/semanticscholar-mcp.git semanticscholar-mcp

Claude Desktop / other MCP client

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "semanticscholar-mcp": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": ["--from", "git+https://github.com/dam2452/semanticscholar-mcp.git", "semanticscholar-mcp"],
      "env": { "S2_API_KEY": "<value>" }
    }
  }
}

After pushing a new version: uv cache clean and restart the client.

Local run

uv run --directory . semanticscholar-mcp

Tests (manual):

uv run --directory . --with pytest pytest test/