Semantic Scholar MCP Server
Updated June 2026The Semantic Scholar MCP server, built by zongmin-yu (Community), provides the Semantic Scholar MCP Server is a FastMCP-based Python server that connects Claude, Cursor, VS Code, and other MCP clients to the Semantic Scholar API — the Allen Institute for AI's corpus of 200M+ academic papers — so an assistant can search literature, trace citation networks, and pull author profiles directly inside a conversation instead of guessing from training data. It is community-built and best for Search.
by zongmin-yu (Community)
About
The Semantic Scholar MCP Server is a FastMCP-based Python server that connects Claude, Cursor, VS Code, and other MCP clients to the Semantic Scholar API — the Allen Institute for AI's corpus of 200M+ academic papers — so an assistant can search literature, trace citation networks, and pull author profiles directly inside a conversation instead of guessing from training data. On the paper side it exposes full-text and title-based search with advanced filtering, multi-strategy ranked search, single- and multi-paper recommendations, and efficient batch detail retrieval with customizable field selection. Its citation-analysis tools walk the citation graph in both directions — citations and references — with citation context and influence signals, which is what makes it a strong fit for literature-review and citation-tracing agents rather than one-off lookups. Author tools cover author search, profile details, publication history, and batch author retrieval. It works unauthenticated for light use, but setting a SEMANTIC_SCHOLAR_API_KEY environment variable raises rate limits for heavier workflows; the server handles rate-limit compliance, connection pooling, and graceful shutdown internally. Install with `pip install semantic-scholar-fastmcp` or run it with no install via `uvx semantic-scholar-fastmcp`, then point your client's config at the uvx command. A Smithery one-click install for Claude Desktop and a companion Claude Code skills bundle (expand-references, trace-citations, paper-triage) are also available. Requires Python 3.10+.
Installation
uvx semantic-scholar-fastmcpFrequently Asked Questions
What is Semantic Scholar MCP Server?
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Repo Health
Local/stdio install — runs on your machine, so there is no remote endpoint to verify live. Trust signal below is from the source repo.
Repo recency not yet available for this server.
Quick Info
- Install Type
- pip
- Author
- zongmin-yu (Community)
- Categories
- 2
- Integrations
- 5
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