Research tools · by Allen Institute for AI (Ai2)

Semantic Scholar

A free search engine for scientific papers from Ai2, with a public Academic Graph API and bulk dataset releases of papers, authors, citations and abstracts.

You can walk the citation network of almost any paper in code, from a single lookup to a full snapshot of the whole graph.

API, no keyDownloadCommercial: conditions

Open semanticscholar.org ↗ agent.md

For your project

Official API: Official API · Free 1000 requests per second shared among all unauthenticated users; an individual key gets 1 request per second
“Most Semantic Scholar endpoints are available to the public without authentication” semanticscholar.org/product/api
Key: Not needed
“Certain endpoints require authentication via an API key” semanticscholar.org/product/api
Formats: JSON
Data download: Yes json
License: Semantic Scholar API License Agreement; each dataset has its own license (e.g. ODC-BY, CC BY-NC) API use; bulk datasets follow the license in each dataset's README
Commercial use: Commercial use with conditions
“repackage, sell, rent, lease, lend, distribute, or sublicense the API” semanticscholar.org/product/api/license
Credit: Credit required
“Licensee will include an attribution to “Semantic Scholar” on its website or in any published materials” semanticscholar.org/product/api/license
Embedding: Embedding with conditions
“to access and display the data, datasets, content, and materials that AI2 makes available to S2 users” semanticscholar.org/product/api/license
Using the website: Free

Read on Semantic Scholar's own pages on Oct 23, 2026 · license or terms · API docs. Check the license page before you ship.

For your agent

Official free REST API (JSON) at api.semanticscholar.org/graph/v1; no key needed but the shared pool often returns 429, so request a free key (x-api-key header, 1 req/s); bulk datasets via /datasets/v1 need a key; no official MCP server or SDK.
Credit Semantic Scholar as its API terms ask; some bulk datasets are CC BY-NC.
Without a key all callers share one rate pool, so expect HTTP 429 and retry with backoff; a free key gives a steady 1 request per second.

Paste into your agent: Read https://agentgid.com/resources/semantic-scholar/agent.md before using Semantic Scholar.

What you can build

Paper search for your research agentGive your agent a tool that finds papers, their citations and authors through the Semantic Scholar API, and links the arXiv preprint when there is one.

A citation-map explorer that expands a paper's references and citations on click
A weekly alert that lists new highly cited papers on a topic, with a Semantic Scholar credit line
A reading-list builder that ranks a paper's references by citation count and year

More in Research tools

All 5 →

Connected Papers Starting from a single paper you get a map of its neighbourhood, which quickly shows the key works you missed. APICommercial: conditions Elicit It does the dull part of a literature review, screening and pulling numbers out of papers, and shows the source for every claim. API (paid)Commercial: conditions Consensus For a yes/no question it shows how the studies split, which says more than any single paper. API (paid)License unclear SciSpace You can upload a dense paper and ask it plain questions, with each answer pointing back to the paragraph it came from. License unclear

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