🔬 Semantic Scholar MCP Server

The most comprehensive MCP server for academic research. Direct access to 200M+ papers from Semantic Scholar within Claude Desktop.

🚀 Features

Tool	Description
`semantic_scholar_search_papers`	Advanced paper search with filters (year, field, citations, open access)
`semantic_scholar_get_paper`	Full paper details with optional citations and references
`semantic_scholar_search_authors`	Find researchers by name
`semantic_scholar_get_author`	Author profiles with h-index, publications, affiliations
`semantic_scholar_recommendations`	AI-powered related paper discovery
`semantic_scholar_bulk_papers`	Batch retrieval of up to 500 papers

Supported ID Formats:

Semantic Scholar ID
DOI (DOI:10.1038/...)
ArXiv (ARXIV:2106.15928)
PubMed (PMID:32908142)
ACL (ACL:P19-1285)
CorpusId (CorpusId:215416146)

📦 Installation

Option 1: pip (Recommended)

pip install semantic-scholar-mcp

Option 2: From Source

git clone https://github.com/smaniches/semantic-scholar-mcp.git
cd semantic-scholar-mcp
pip install -e .

🔑 Get Your API Key

Go to Semantic Scholar API
Sign up for a free API key
Note your rate limit (typically 1-100 requests/second depending on tier)

⚙️ Configuration

Claude Desktop Setup

Add to your Claude Desktop config file:

Windows: %APPDATA%\Claude\claude_desktop_config.json macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json Linux: ~/.config/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "semantic_scholar": {
      "command": "python",
      "args": ["-m", "semantic_scholar_mcp"],
      "env": {
        "SEMANTIC_SCHOLAR_API_KEY": "your-api-key-here"
      }
    }
  }
}

Then restart Claude Desktop.

💡 Usage Examples

Search Papers

Search for "transformer attention mechanism" papers from 2023 with at least 100 citations

Get Paper Details

Get details for DOI:10.1038/s41586-021-03819-2 including its top 20 citations

Find Related Papers

Get recommendations based on paper 649def34f8be52c8b66281af98ae884c09aef38b

Author Search

Find author "Yoshua Bengio" and list their recent publications

Bulk Retrieval

Retrieve these papers: DOI:10.1038/nature12373, ARXIV:2106.15928, PMID:32908142

📊 Rate Limits

Tier	Requests/Second	How to Get
No API Key	1 req/sec	Default
Free API Key	1 req/sec	Sign up
Academic Partner	10-100 req/sec	Apply via S2

🏗️ Architecture

┌─────────────────┐     ┌──────────────────────┐     ┌─────────────────┐
│  Claude Desktop │────▶│  semantic-scholar-mcp │────▶│ Semantic Scholar│
│   (MCP Client)  │◀────│     (This Server)     │◀────│      API        │
└─────────────────┘     └──────────────────────┘     └─────────────────┘
        │                         │                          │
        │ stdio (JSON-RPC)        │ Your API Key             │ HTTPS
        │ Local process           │ Local machine            │ 200M+ papers

Your API key never leaves your machine. The MCP server runs locally.

🛠️ Development

# Clone
git clone https://github.com/smaniches/semantic-scholar-mcp.git
cd semantic-scholar-mcp

# Install dev dependencies
pip install -e ".[dev]"

# Run tests
pytest

# Type checking
mypy src/

📄 License

MIT License - see LICENSE file.

👤 Author

Santiago Maniches

🏢 Founder & CEO, TOPOLOGICA LLC
🔬 ORCID: 0009-0005-6480-1987
💼 LinkedIn: santiago-maniches
🌐 Website: topologica.ai

🤝 Contributing

Contributions welcome! Please read our Contributing Guidelines.

📬 Support

🐛 Issues: GitHub Issues
💬 Discussions: GitHub Discussions
📧 Contact: santiago@topologica.ai

⭐ Star History

If this tool helps your research, please star the repo!

Built with ❤️ by TOPOLOGICA LLC
Advancing computational research through topological intelligence

semantic-scholar-mcp