semantic-scholar-mcp

# Semantic Scholar MCP Server An [MCP](https://modelcontextprotocol.io) server that gives Claude access to [Semantic Scholar](https://www.semanticscholar.org/)'s database of 200M+ academic papers. Search papers, explore citation graphs, and look up authors — directly from Claude. Wraps the official [`semanticscholar`](https://pypi.org/project/semanticscholar/) SDK with a process-wide rate limiter to prevent 429s under concurrent dispatch. ## Tools | Tool | Description | |------|-------------| | `search_papers` | Keyword search with filters for year range, fields of study, and open-access availability | | `get_paper` | Get full details for a paper by Semantic Scholar ID, DOI, ArXiv ID, or PubMed ID | | `get_citations` | Navigate the citation graph — find papers that cite a given paper, or papers it references | | `get_author` | Look up an author's profile, h-index, and publication metrics | | `search_by_author` | Find an author by name and list their top papers | ## Setup ### Prerequisites - Python 3.11+ - [uv](https://docs.astral.sh/uv/) (recommended) or pip - A Semantic Scholar API key (see below — strongly recommended) ### Get an API key Without a key, requests share a global anonymous rate-limit bucket and you will see frequent `429 Too Many Requests` errors during normal use. Request a free key at [semanticscholar.org/product/api](https://www.semanticscholar.org/product/api#api-key) — turnaround is usually a few days. Once you have a key, set it as an environment variable: ```bash export S2_API_KEY=your_key_here ``` For persistence across shells, add the line to `~/.zshenv` (or your shell's equivalent). ### Install ```bash git clone https://github.com/xiuyechen/semantic-scholar-mcp.git cd semantic-scholar-mcp uv pip install -e . ``` Or with pip: ```bash pip install -e . ``` ### Rate limiting and retries The client wraps the official [`semanticscholar`](https://pypi.org/project/semanticscholar/) Python SDK and adds a process-wide async token bucket on top. Concurrent calls from the same process serialize through a 1.05s floor so the client cannot burst past the API's 1 req/sec limit, even when an LLM dispatches multiple tools in parallel. Transient 429s are retried with `Retry-After`-aware exponential backoff (up to 5 attempts). No tuning required. ## Configure with Claude ### Claude Code ```bash claude mcp add semantic-scholar -- semantic-scholar-mcp ``` Or with an API key: ```bash claude mcp add semantic-scholar -e S2_API_KEY=your_key -- semantic-scholar-mcp ``` ### Claude Desktop Add to your `claude_desktop_config.json`: ```json { "mcpServers": { "semantic-scholar": { "command": "semantic-scholar-mcp", "env": { "S2_API_KEY": "your_key_here" } } } } ``` ## Example Usage Once configured, you can ask Claude things like: - "Search for recent papers on protein structure prediction" - "Find the paper with DOI 10.1038/s41586-021-03819-2 and summarize it" - "What papers cite AlphaFold2? Show me the most influential ones" - "Look up David Baker's publication record" - "Find open-access papers on CRISPR gene editing from 2024" ## API Reference This server wraps the [Semantic Scholar Academic Graph API](https://api.semanticscholar.org/api-docs/). The API is free to use and covers: - 200M+ papers from all major publishers - 2.4B+ citation edges - Author profiles with h-index and affiliation data - Open access PDF links where available - AI-generated TLDR summaries for many papers ## License MIT