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)

Authors (4 tools)

Recommendations (2 tools)

Snippets (1 tool)

Related MCP server: Semantic Scholar MCP Server

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