Semantic Scholar

Semantic Scholar is a free, AI-powered academic search engine developed by the Allen Institute for AI (AI2) that indexes over 214 million scholarly papers with 2.49 billion citations and 79 million authors. The platform provides a public REST API organized into three services: Academic Graph (papers, authors, citations, venues, and SPECTER2 embeddings), Recommendations (paper similarity and interest-based suggestions), and Datasets (bulk downloadable corpus snapshots updated monthly). API access is available without authentication at a shared rate limit, or with a free API key obtained via request for a dedicated 1 RPS allowance. Semantic Scholar supports AI agent integrations through multiple community-built MCP servers that expose its academic graph to LLM-based toolchains.

Semantic Scholar publishes 6 APIs on the APIs.io network, including Author Data API, Incremental Updates API, Paper Data API, and 3 more. Tagged areas include Academic, Research, Papers, Citations, and Authors.

The Semantic Scholar catalog on APIs.io includes 1 JSON-LD context and 1 Spectral governance ruleset.

Semantic Scholar’s developer surface includes documentation, engineering blog, pricing, tutorials, and 15 more developer resources.

🌐 Visit website 📡 Source on GitHub

43.9/100 developing ▬ flat Agent 26/100 agent aware Full breakdown ↓
scored 2026-09-08 · rubric v0.20.0

3 APIs

Academic Research Papers Citations AuthorsScientific LiteratureArtificial Intelligence Recommendations

Kin Score

Kin Score How this is scored →
scored 2026-09-08 · rubric v0.20.0

Composite quality — 43.9/100 · developing

Contract Quality 10.0 / 19

Developer Ergonomics 1.8 / 15

Access Clarity 9.1 / 15

Operational Transparency 4.9 / 10

Contract Governance 0.9 / 9

Discoverability 5.6 / 8

Regulatory Posture 5.8 / 15

Create-or-Update Ergonomics 0.0 / 10

Agent readiness — 26/100 · agent aware

Machine-Readable Contract 18 / 18

Agentic Access Contract 10 / 10

Documented Reversibility 0 / 6

MCP Server 0 / 12

Machine-Readable Auth 0 / 10

Idempotency 0 / 9

Stable Error Semantics 8 / 8

Request/Response Examples 7 / 7

Rate-Limit Signaling 7 / 7

Typed Event Surface 0 / 6

Agent Skills 0 / 5

Well-Known Catalog 0 / 4

Consent & Bot Identity 0 / 3

A2A Agent Card 0 / 8

Dry-Run / Simulate Mode 0 / 4

Delegated User Identity 0 / 6

Protected Resource Metadata 0 / 5

Registration Without a Human 0 / 6

Agentic Commerce Well-Known Document 0 / 5

Regulatory Posture applies to this provider. Its tags matched the Education & Research regime, so Regulatory Posture carries 15 points of the composite. If this regime is wrong for your business, say so on your provider repo — the applicability map is public and we will correct it.

Create-or-Update Ergonomics applies to this provider. This API accepts writes, so it carries 10 points of the composite. It is scored from the published contracts themselves: whether a caller can create-or-update in one call, whether the write accepts a key the caller already holds, and whether the response says which branch ran. Without that, every write needs a search-and-branch in front of it, and the first time that check is skipped a duplicate record is created. Scored against the observed mean rather than raw — a provider at the catalog average is unchanged by this facet, not penalised by it.

The six quality facets above are damped to 75 points between them, because the conditional facet above carries the other 25. That is why each facet's contribution is shown against a damped maximum: raising a quality facet moves the composite by 75% of its nominal weight, not 100%. The full arithmetic is at apis.io/rating/.

Improve this rating by publishing the missing artifacts — every area above can be raised, and the full rubric is at apis.io/rating/. Every facet and dimension name above is a link: it opens that measurement's own page — what it means, the exact checks that feed it, how the whole catalog distributes on it, and the providers at the top of it. This rating is computed from github.com/api-evangelist/semantic-scholar: open an issue to ask a question, or submit a pull request to add artifacts. Submit an artifact on GitHub — free → Manage your own listing — the Influence plan, $499/mo →

APIs 6

Individual APIs this provider publishes, each with its own machine-readable definition.

Semantic Scholar Author Data API

The Author Data API from Semantic Scholar — 4 operation(s) for author data.

Semantic Scholar Incremental Updates API

The Incremental Updates API from Semantic Scholar — 1 operation(s) for incremental updates.

Semantic Scholar Paper Data API

The Paper Data API from Semantic Scholar — 9 operation(s) for paper data.

Semantic Scholar Paper Recommendations API

The Paper Recommendations API from Semantic Scholar — 2 operation(s) for paper recommendations.

Semantic Scholar Release Data API

The Release Data API from Semantic Scholar — 3 operation(s) for release data.

Semantic Scholar Snippet Text API

The Snippet Text API from Semantic Scholar — 1 operation(s) for snippet text.

Open Collections 7

Open, tool-agnostic API collections (OpenAPI-derived and Bruno).

API Collection

OPEN COLLECTION

Academic Graph Author Data API

OPEN COLLECTION

Academic Graph Author Data Incremental Updates API

OPEN COLLECTION

Academic Graph Author Data Paper Data API

OPEN COLLECTION

Academic Graph Author Data Paper Recommendations API

OPEN COLLECTION

Academic Graph Author Data Release Data API

OPEN COLLECTION

Academic Graph Author Data Snippet Text API

OPEN COLLECTION

Scroll for all 7

Pricing Plans 1

Published pricing tiers and plan structures.

Semantic Scholar Plans Pricing

3 plans

PLANS

Rate Limits 1

Documented rate limits and quota policies.

Semantic Scholar Rate Limits

3 limits

RATE LIMITS

FinOps 1

Cost, billing, and metering signals for API financial operations.

Semantic Scholar Finops

FINOPS

Semantic Vocabularies 1

JSON-LD contexts and semantic vocabularies used across these APIs.

Semantic Scholar Context

0 classes · 40 properties

JSON-LD

Spectral Rules 1

Spectral governance rulesets for linting and validating these APIs.

Semantic Scholar API Rules

6 rules · 4 warnings 2 info

SPECTRAL

JSON Schema 4

Standalone JSON Schema definitions for this provider's data models.

AuthorWithPapers

10 properties

JSON SCHEMA

Citation

5 properties

JSON SCHEMA

Release Metadata

3 properties

JSON SCHEMA

FullPaper

26 properties

JSON SCHEMA

Examples 3

Example request and response payloads for these APIs.

Semantic Scholar Datasets Releases Example

2 fields

EXAMPLE

Semantic Scholar Paper Search Example

2 fields

EXAMPLE

Semantic Scholar Recommendations Example

2 fields

EXAMPLE

Security Posture 2

Authentication, domain security, vulnerability disclosure, and trust-center signals.

Semantic Scholar Domain Security

TLSv1.3 · DMARC

SECURITY

Semantic Scholar Vulnerability Disclosure

security.txt · contact published

SECURITY

Agentic Access 1

Recommended x-agentic-access execution contracts for AI agents.

Semantic Scholar Agentic Access

20 operations · 3 acting

AGENTIC

Resources

Documentation 1

Reference material describing how the API behaves

Documentation

Documentation

Agent Surfaces 1

MCP servers, agent skills, and machine-readable catalogs

AgenticAccess

AgenticAccess

Build 2

SDKs, sample code, and the tooling you integrate with

GitHubOrganization

GitHubOrganization

GitHubRepository

GitHubRepository

Access & Security 2

Authentication, authorization, and security posture

VulnerabilityDisclosure

VulnerabilityDisclosure

DomainSecurity

DomainSecurity

Learn 1

Tutorials, courses, talks, and written guidance

Tutorial

Tutorial

Operate 3

Status, limits, changes, and where to get help

IssueTracker

IssueTracker

StatusPage

StatusPage

RateLimits

RateLimits

Commercial 5

Pricing, plans, and the legal terms of use

Pricing

PrivacyPolicy

TermsOfService

Plans

FinOps

Company 2

The organization behind the API

Website

Website

Blog

Blog

Other 2

Properties that don't map to a standard resource type

CapabilityMap

CapabilityMap

Source (apis.yml)

aid: semantic-scholar
name: Semantic Scholar
description: 'Semantic Scholar is a free, AI-powered academic search engine developed by the Allen Institute for AI (AI2)
  that indexes over 214 million scholarly papers with 2.49 billion citations and 79 million authors. The platform provides
  a public REST API organized into three services: Academic Graph (papers, authors, citations, venues, and SPECTER2 embeddings),
  Recommendations (paper similarity and interest-based suggestions), and Datasets (bulk downloadable corpus snapshots updated
  monthly). API access is available without authentication at a shared rate limit, or with a free API key obtained via request
  for a dedicated 1 RPS allowance. Semantic Scholar supports AI agent integrations through multiple community-built MCP servers
  that expose its academic graph to LLM-based toolchains.

  '
type: Index
deliveryModel:
  model: unknown
  open_source: unknown
  commercial: true
  callable_host: true
  label: Delivery model not determined — needs a product licence on record
  confidence: low
  source:
  - openapi
  - pricing
  - repository-unlicensed
  generated: '2026-08-28'
  method: derived
accessModel:
  pricing: unknown
  onboarding: unknown
  trial: false
  try_now: false
  public: false
  label: Unknown
  confidence: low
  source:
  - plans
  generated: '2026-07-22'
  method: derived
image: https://kinlane-images.s3.amazonaws.com/shared/apis-json/icons/semantic-scholar.png
tags:
- Academic
- Research
- Papers
- Citations
- Authors
- Scientific Literature
- Artificial Intelligence
- Recommendations
tags_raw:
- Academic
- Research
- Papers
- Citations
- Authors
- Scientific Literature
- AI
- Recommendations
url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/semantic-scholar/refs/heads/main/apis.yml
created: '2026-06-12'
modified: '2026-06-12'
specificationVersion: '0.23'
apis:
- aid: semantic-scholar:semantic-scholar-author-data-api
  name: Semantic Scholar Author Data API
  description: The Author Data API from Semantic Scholar — 4 operation(s) for author data.
  humanURL: https://www.semanticscholar.org/product/api
  baseURL: https://api.semanticscholar.org/graph/v1
  tags:
  - Author Data
  properties:
  - type: OpenAPI
    url: openapi/semantic-scholar-author-data-api-openapi.yml
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://api.semanticscholar.org/api-docs/
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://api.semanticscholar.org/api-docs/recommendations
- aid: semantic-scholar:semantic-scholar-incremental-updates-api
  name: Semantic Scholar Incremental Updates API
  description: The Incremental Updates API from Semantic Scholar — 1 operation(s) for incremental updates.
  humanURL: https://www.semanticscholar.org/product/api
  baseURL: https://api.semanticscholar.org/graph/v1
  tags:
  - Incremental Updates
  properties:
  - type: OpenAPI
    url: openapi/semantic-scholar-incremental-updates-api-openapi.yml
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://api.semanticscholar.org/api-docs/
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://api.semanticscholar.org/api-docs/recommendations
- aid: semantic-scholar:semantic-scholar-paper-data-api
  name: Semantic Scholar Paper Data API
  description: The Paper Data API from Semantic Scholar — 9 operation(s) for paper data.
  humanURL: https://www.semanticscholar.org/product/api
  baseURL: https://api.semanticscholar.org/graph/v1
  tags:
  - Paper Data
  properties:
  - type: OpenAPI
    url: openapi/semantic-scholar-paper-data-api-openapi.yml
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://api.semanticscholar.org/api-docs/
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://api.semanticscholar.org/api-docs/recommendations
- aid: semantic-scholar:semantic-scholar-paper-recommendations-api
  name: Semantic Scholar Paper Recommendations API
  description: The Paper Recommendations API from Semantic Scholar — 2 operation(s) for paper recommendations.
  humanURL: https://www.semanticscholar.org/product/api
  baseURL: https://api.semanticscholar.org/graph/v1
  tags:
  - Paper Recommendations
  properties:
  - type: OpenAPI
    url: openapi/semantic-scholar-paper-recommendations-api-openapi.yml
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://api.semanticscholar.org/api-docs/
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://api.semanticscholar.org/api-docs/recommendations
- aid: semantic-scholar:semantic-scholar-release-data-api
  name: Semantic Scholar Release Data API
  description: The Release Data API from Semantic Scholar — 3 operation(s) for release data.
  humanURL: https://www.semanticscholar.org/product/api
  baseURL: https://api.semanticscholar.org/graph/v1
  tags:
  - Release Data
  properties:
  - type: OpenAPI
    url: openapi/semantic-scholar-release-data-api-openapi.yml
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://api.semanticscholar.org/api-docs/
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://api.semanticscholar.org/api-docs/recommendations
- aid: semantic-scholar:semantic-scholar-snippet-text-api
  name: Semantic Scholar Snippet Text API
  description: The Snippet Text API from Semantic Scholar — 1 operation(s) for snippet text.
  humanURL: https://www.semanticscholar.org/product/api
  baseURL: https://api.semanticscholar.org/graph/v1
  tags:
  - Snippet Text
  properties:
  - type: OpenAPI
    url: openapi/semantic-scholar-snippet-text-api-openapi.yml
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://api.semanticscholar.org/api-docs/
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://api.semanticscholar.org/api-docs/recommendations
common:
- type: CapabilityMap
  url: capabilities/semantic-scholar-capability-edges.yml
  name: Semantic Scholar Business Capability Map
- type: IssueTracker
  url: https://github.com/allenai/s2-folks/issues
- type: AgenticAccess
  url: agentic-access/semantic-scholar-agentic-access.yml
- type: VulnerabilityDisclosure
  url: security/semantic-scholar-vulnerability-disclosure.yml
- type: DomainSecurity
  url: security/semantic-scholar-domain-security.yml
- type: Website
  url: https://www.semanticscholar.org
- type: Documentation
  url: https://www.semanticscholar.org/product/api
- type: GitHubOrganization
  url: https://github.com/allenai
- type: GitHubRepository
  url: https://github.com/allenai/s2-folks
- type: Blog
  url: https://medium.com/ai2-blog/semantic-scholar/home
- type: StatusPage
  url: https://status.api.semanticscholar.org/
- type: X
  url: https://twitter.com/SemanticScholar
- type: Pricing
  url: https://www.semanticscholar.org/product/api
- type: PrivacyPolicy
  url: https://www.semanticscholar.org/privacy-policy
- type: TermsOfService
  url: https://www.semanticscholar.org/product/api/license
- type: Tutorial
  url: https://www.semanticscholar.org/product/api/tutorial
- type: Plans
  url: plans/semantic-scholar-plans-pricing.yml
- type: RateLimits
  url: rate-limits/semantic-scholar-rate-limits.yml
- type: FinOps
  url: finops/semantic-scholar-finops.yml
maintainers:
- FN: Kin Lane
  email: kin@apievangelist.com

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