scholarcli 1.3

A tool for structured literature searches across bibliographic databases

Scholar

A command-line tool for conducting structured literature searches across multiple academic databases, with built-in support for systematic literature reviews.

Features

Multi-Database Search

Search across six academic databases with a single query:

• Semantic Scholar - AI-powered research database with 200M+ papers
• OpenAlex - Open catalog of 250M+ scholarly works
• DBLP - Computer science bibliography
• Web of Science - Comprehensive citation index (requires API key)
• IEEE Xplore - IEEE technical literature (requires API key)
• arXiv - Preprints (no API key)

# Search specific providers
scholar search "federated learning" -p semantic_scholar -p openalex

# Start from a research question (LLM generates provider-specific queries)
scholar rq "How can privacy-preserving ML be evaluated?" \
  --provider openalex --provider dblp \
  --count 20

Interactive Review Interface

Review search results in a terminal-based interface with vim-style navigation:

scholar search "neural networks" --review

The TUI supports:

• Keep/Discard decisions with mandatory motivations for discards
• Theme tagging for organizing kept papers
• Note-taking with your preferred editor
• PDF viewing with automatic download and caching
• Abstract enrichment for papers missing abstracts
• LLM-assisted classification to help review large result sets
• Sorting and filtering by various criteria

Output Formats

Export results in multiple formats:

# Pretty table (default for terminal)
scholar search "query"

# Machine-readable formats
scholar search "query" -f json
scholar search "query" -f csv
scholar search "query" -f bibtex

Session Management

Save and resume review sessions:

# List saved sessions
scholar sessions list

# Resume a session
scholar sessions resume "machine learning"

# Export session to reports
scholar sessions export "machine learning" -f all

Paper Notes

Manage notes across all reviewed papers:

# Browse papers with notes
scholar notes

# List papers with notes
scholar notes list

# Export/import notes
scholar notes export notes.json
scholar notes import notes.json

Caching

Search results are cached to avoid redundant API calls:

scholar cache info    # Show cache statistics
scholar cache clear   # Delete cached results
scholar cache path    # Print cache directory

PDF downloads are also cached for offline viewing.

Quickstart

Install

pipx install scholarcli

Configure LLM access (optional, for scholar rq and LLM-assisted review)

Scholar uses the llm package for model selection and API key configuration.

If you want to configure it via the llm CLI, install it as well (or install scholarcli with pipx --include-deps so the dependency CLIs are exposed):

pipx install llm
# Or: pipx install --include-deps scholarcli

Then configure at least one provider (examples):

llm install llm-openai-plugin
llm keys set openai

# Or:
llm install llm-anthropic
llm keys set anthropic

Set a default model for Scholar to use:

llm models
llm models default gpt-4o-mini

First run

# Search directly
scholar search "machine learning privacy"

# Start from a research question (LLM generates provider-specific queries)
scholar rq "How do LLMs support novice programming?" --count 20

Installation

If you don't use pipx, you can install with pip:

pip install scholarcli

Or with uv:

uv pip install scholarcli

Configuration

Some providers require API keys set as environment variables:

Provider	Environment Variable	Required	How to Get
Semantic Scholar	S2_API_KEY	No	api.semanticscholar.org
OpenAlex	OPENALEX_EMAIL	No	Any email (for polite pool)
DBLP	-	No	No key needed
Web of Science	WOS_API_KEY	Yes	developer.clarivate.com
IEEE Xplore	IEEE_API_KEY	Yes	developer.ieee.org

View provider status:

scholar providers

Usage Examples

Basic Search

# Search with default providers (Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, DBLP)
scholar search "differential privacy"

# Limit results per provider (default: 1000)
scholar search "blockchain" -l 50

# Unlimited results per provider
scholar search "blockchain" -l 0

Systematic Review Workflow

# 1. Search and review interactively
scholar search "privacy-preserving machine learning" --review --name "privacy-ml-review"

# 2. Add more searches to the same session
scholar search "federated learning privacy" --review --name "privacy-ml-review"

# 3. Resume reviewing later
scholar sessions resume "privacy-ml-review"

# 4. Generate reports
scholar sessions export "privacy-ml-review" -f all

Enriching Results

Some providers (like DBLP) don't include abstracts. Fetch them from other sources:

# Enrich during search
scholar search "query" --enrich

# Enrich an existing session
scholar enrich "session-name"

PDF Management

# Download and open a PDF
scholar pdf open "https://arxiv.org/pdf/2301.00001.pdf"

# View PDF cache
scholar pdf info
scholar pdf clear

Keybindings (Review TUI)

Key	Action
j/k	Navigate up/down
Enter	View paper details
K	Keep paper (quick)
T	Keep with themes
d	Discard (requires motivation)
n	Edit notes
p	Open PDF
e	Enrich (fetch abstract)
L	LLM-assisted classification
s	Sort papers
f	Filter by status
q	Quit

LLM-Assisted Review

For large result sets, Scholar can use LLMs to assist with paper classification:

# In the TUI, press 'L' to invoke LLM classification
# Or use the CLI command directly
scholar llm-review "session-name" --count 10

How It Works

1. Tag some papers manually - The LLM needs examples to learn from. Review at least 5 papers with tags (themes for kept, motivations for discarded).

2. Set research context (optional) - Describe your review's focus to help the LLM understand relevance criteria.

3. Invoke LLM classification - The LLM classifies pending papers based on your examples, returning confidence scores.

4. Review LLM decisions - Prioritize low-confidence classifications. Accept correct ones, correct wrong ones.

5. Iterate - Corrections become training examples for the next round.

Requirements

Install and configure the llm command (Scholar uses llm's configuration and default model):

pipx install llm

llm install llm-openai-plugin
llm keys set openai

# Pick a default model (used by `scholar rq` and `scholar llm-review`)
llm models
llm models default gpt-4o-mini

If you installed Scholar with pipx install scholarcli and want the llm CLI available from that same environment, you can alternatively install Scholar with pipx install --include-deps scholarcli.

The LLM integration supports models available through Simon Willison's llm package (OpenAI, Anthropic, local models, etc.).

Note: scholar llm-review learns from your existing labeled examples (typically ~5 tagged papers). scholar rq can start without examples by using the research question as context.

Documentation

Full documentation is available in the doc/ directory as a literate program combining documentation and implementation.

License

MIT License - see LICENSE for details.