Search Semantic Scholar for papers matching a query.

Fetch full metadata for a single paper.

Fetch author profile and publications, or search by name.

If identifier looks like a numeric S2 author ID, fetches the author directly. Otherwise performs a name search and returns up to 5 candidates for disambiguation.

Fetch papers that cite the given paper (forward citations).

Fetch papers referenced by the given paper (backward references).

Traverse the citation graph from one or more seed papers.

Performs BFS up to depth hops. Returns nodes (paper records) and directed edges. Hard-caps at max_nodes to prevent runaway expansion.

Find the shortest citation path between two papers.

Uses BFS over the citation/reference graph. Leverages cached citation and reference lists to minimise API calls.

Recommend papers based on positive (and optionally negative) examples.

Resolve a list of paper, patent, or book identifiers to full records.

Uses the S2 batch endpoint for paper IDs/DOIs, with OpenAlex fallback. Patent numbers (e.g. EP1234567A1) are auto-detected and resolved via the EPO OPS API when configured. ISBNs (prefixed ISBN:) are resolved via Open Library.

Fetch OpenAlex metadata to supplement Semantic Scholar data.

Resolves the paper's DOI from S2, then queries OpenAlex for the requested enrichment fields. Results are cached for 30 days.

Poll for the result of a background task.

When a tool returns {"queued": true, "task_id": "..."} it means the operation was submitted for background processing. Call this tool with the task_id to check whether it has completed.

PDF conversion tasks typically take 1-5 minutes. Keep polling — the response includes elapsed_seconds and a hint with expected duration while the task is in progress.

List all active background tasks.

Returns: JSON list of {"task_id": ..., "status": ...} dicts.

Generate formatted citations for one or more papers.

Resolves papers via Semantic Scholar, optionally enriches with OpenAlex metadata, and formats as BibTeX, CSL-JSON, or RIS.

Search for books by title, author, or free text.

Uses Open Library. Prefer title and author over query — they use dedicated indexes and return far better results.

Fetch book metadata by ISBN or Open Library ID.

Get a book excerpt and preview info from Google Books.

Returns the publisher description, text snippet, and a link to the Google Books preview page. Google Books does not expose full chapter text via API -- the excerpt is a publisher-provided summary and/or search snippet.

Recommend books for a subject via Open Library.

Uses the Open Library subject API to find popular books on a topic, sorted by edition count (a proxy for popularity).

Normalise a messy standard citation string to its canonical form.

Tries local regex first (fast, no network). Falls back to querying source APIs when local patterns don't match. Returns all candidates when the input is ambiguous.

Search technical standards by identifier, title, or free text.

Searches NIST, IETF, W3C, and ETSI. Use body to restrict to one source body.

Retrieve a standard by identifier (canonical or fuzzy).

Resolves fuzzy inputs (e.g. "rfc9000", "nist 800-53") to their canonical form before fetching. With fetch_full_text=True and docling configured, downloads and converts the full text.

Report the last sync run for each standards body.

One row per body. started_at / finished_at are Unix timestamps (seconds). errors is a list of non-fatal error strings from the most recent run (empty on success).

Returns: JSON {"runs": [{body, upstream_ref, added, updated, unchanged, withdrawn, errors, started_at, finished_at}, ...]}. Empty runs list when no sync has been run yet.

Report wrapper and upstream version info for scholar-mcp. Returns server_name, server_version, core_version (fastmcp-pvl-core), and (when configured) an upstream version block. Useful for verifying a deployment matches the expected build.