semantic-scholar-mcp 0.4.0

MCP server for Semantic Scholar API integration with Claude Desktop

Semantic Scholar MCP Server

Access millions of academic papers from Semantic Scholar using the Model Context Protocol (MCP). Works with Claude Code, Claude Desktop, and other MCP-compatible editors.

Features

✅ 33 comprehensive tools - Search papers, analyze citations, manage research
✅ Smart AI prompts - Literature reviews and citation analysis
✅ Project & memory management - Organize your research workflow
✅ Fast & reliable - Built-in caching and error recovery
✅ Free to use - No API key required (optional for higher limits)

Installation

One command (recommended):

claude mcp add semantic-scholar -- uvx semantic-scholar-mcp

Manual setup (add to MCP settings):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "semantic-scholar": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": ["semantic-scholar-mcp"]
    }
  }
}

With API key (for higher rate limits):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "semantic-scholar": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": ["semantic-scholar-mcp"],
      "env": {
        "SEMANTIC_SCHOLAR_API_KEY": "your-api-key-here"
      }
    }
  }
}

Get your free API key at: https://www.semanticscholar.org/product/api

Quick Start

Ask in natural language:

"Find recent papers on transformer architectures"
"Show me details for paper DOI 10.1038/nature14539"
"Get recommendations based on the BERT paper"
"Create a literature review on quantum computing"
"Save this review to memory as 'quantum_survey'"

What You Can Do

📄 Paper Research

• Search papers with advanced filters (year, citations, fields)
• Get full details: abstracts, authors, citations, references
• Convert PDFs to Markdown for analysis
• Find related papers with AI recommendations

👤 Author Analysis

• Search researchers by name or field
• Get author profiles with h-index and metrics
• List all publications by author
• Batch operations for multiple authors

🧠 Smart Features

• AI-powered paper recommendations
• Semantic search with SPECTER embeddings
• Citation network analysis
• Research trend identification

💾 Research Organization

• Create multiple research projects
• Save literature reviews and notes
• Manage research memories
• Switch between project contexts

📊 Datasets

• Access Semantic Scholar datasets
• Download paper/author data
• Get incremental updates

License

MIT License - see LICENSE for details.

⚠️ The get_paper_fulltext tool uses PyMuPDF4LLM (AGPL licensed). Commercial usage may require a commercial PyMuPDF license.

Acknowledgments

• Semantic Scholar for the academic graph API
• Anthropic for the MCP specification
• The academic community for making research accessible

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