Semantic Scholar MCP Server
Server Configuration
Describes the environment variables required to run the server.
| Name | Required | Description | Default |
|---|---|---|---|
| SEMANTIC_SCHOLAR_API_KEY | No | Your Semantic Scholar API key for accessing the Semantic Scholar API. Sign up at https://www.semanticscholar.org/product/api |
Instructions
Guidance the server publishes about itself, which clients place ahead of the tool catalog so the model reads it before choosing anything.
This server publishes no instructions, or was last inspected before Glama recorded them.
Capabilities
Features and capabilities supported by this server
Protocol revision2025-11-25
| Capability | Details |
|---|---|
| tools | {
"listChanged": false
} |
| prompts | {
"listChanged": false
} |
| resources | {
"subscribe": false,
"listChanged": false
} |
| experimental | {} |
Tools
Functions exposed to the LLM to take actions
| Name | Description |
|---|---|
| semantic_scholar_search_papersA | Search for academic papers. |
| semantic_scholar_get_paperA | Get paper details. Accepts: S2 ID, DOI:xxx, ARXIV:xxx, PMID:xxx, CorpusId:xxx |
| semantic_scholar_search_authorsA | Search for academic authors by name. |
| semantic_scholar_get_authorB | Get author profile with optional publications list. |
| semantic_scholar_recommendationsA | Get paper recommendations based on a seed paper. |
| semantic_scholar_bulk_papersA | Retrieve multiple papers in a single request (max 500). |
| semantic_scholar_bulk_searchA | Search papers with sorting and cursor-based pagination for large result sets. |
| semantic_scholar_export_citationA | Export a citation for a paper in BibTeX format. |
| semantic_scholar_match_paperA | Find the closest title match; preserve S2's unscaled numeric matchScore. |
| semantic_scholar_paper_authorsA | Get full author profiles for a paper's authors. |
| semantic_scholar_author_batchA | Retrieve multiple authors in a single request (max 1000). |
| semantic_scholar_multi_recommendA | Get recommendations using multiple positive and negative example papers. |
| semantic_scholar_snippet_searchA | Search within paper full text. Returns text snippets with context. |
| semantic_scholar_statusA | Check server health, API connectivity, and key status. |
Prompts
Interactive templates invoked by user choice
| Name | Description |
|---|---|
No prompts | |
Resources
Contextual data attached and managed by the client
| Name | Description |
|---|---|
No resources | |
TDQS
Scored across 14 tools
Search-related tools (search_papers, bulk_search, snippet_search, match_paper) overlap in broad purpose, but descriptions explicitly cross-reference and delineate use cases; author and recommendation variants are also clearly separated. Minor potential confusion remains between search_papers and bulk_search, so not perfect.
All names use the semantic_scholar_ prefix and snake_case, but suffix conventions mix verb_noun forms (search_papers, get_author) with noun phrases (recommendations, bulk_papers, paper_authors, author_batch, status). Word order is also inconsistent between bulk_search and search_papers, though names remain readable.
Fourteen tools is well within a reasonable range for a broad academic-paper API, and each tool maps to a distinct operation or useful batch variant. The set does not feel bloated; core search, retrieval, author, recommendation, and export workflows each earn their place.
The surface covers core read-only Semantic Scholar workflows: relevance search, bulk search, snippet search, title matching, paper detail and bulk retrieval, author search/profile/batch/paper authors, recommendations, citation export, and health status. Minor gaps include BibTeX-only citation export and no standalone citation/reference graph tool, though get_paper can include those lists.