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 API contracts indexed on the APIs.io network, including Author Data API, Incremental Updates API, Paper Data API, and 3 more. Tagged areas include Academic, Research, Paper, 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 📡 Profile data on GitHub

32.9/100 thin ▬ flat Agent 34/100 agent ready Front door AI 4/6 moderate Heartbeat 50/100 alive saas Full breakdown ↓
scored 2026-11-06 · rubric v0.27.0 · Show this score on your site →

AccessFree

3 published contracts 1 MCP Servers

Academic Research Paper Citations AuthorsScientific LiteratureArtificial Intelligence Recommendations Research Data Open Access

What this lets a business do 2

Business capabilities this provider's published APIs can perform, derived from its own contracts. Browse all capabilities →

Data & Reference Information Services

AE-230

Paper RecommendationsSnippet Text

GET /papers/forpaper/{paper_id} GET /snippet/search

Research & Scholarship Management

BC-4780

Author DataPaper Data

GET /paper/{paper_id} GET /paper/{paper_id}/citations GET /author/{author_id} GET /author/{author_id}/papers

Kin Score

Kin Score How this is scored →
scored 2026-11-06 · rubric v0.27.0

Composite quality — 32.9/100 · thin

Contract Quality 9.1 / 19

Developer Ergonomics 1.8 / 15

Access Clarity 4.3 / 15

Operational Transparency 3.6 / 10

Contract Governance 0.9 / 9

Discoverability 5.5 / 8

Regulatory Posture 2.9 / 15

Create-or-Update Ergonomics 0.0 / 10

Agent readiness — 34/100 · agent ready

Machine-Readable Contract 18 / 18

Agentic Access Contract 10 / 10

Documented Reversibility 0 / 6

MCP Server 12 / 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

Pagination 5 / 5

Distinct Operations 3 / 3

MCP Tool Quality 6 / 6

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/.

Show this score on your site.

It updates itself when the score changes. Paste this where you link to your API docs:

<a href="https://apis.io/providers/semantic-scholar/"><img src="https://apis.io/badge/semantic-scholar/card.svg" alt="Semantic Scholar on APIs.io — Kin Score by API Evangelist"></a>

Other styles, a README pill and a shields.io endpoint are on the badge page.

Raise your score.

Agent readiness — checks not met, largest first (exact, from this profile):

Machine-Readable Auth +10 pts — a served openid-configuration/oauth-authorization-server carrying `issuer` (served), else the securitySchemes class in the provider OpenAPIs — bound (mutualTLS, DPoP, Signature) > negotiable (oauth2 authorizationCode/clientCredentials, openIdConnect) > bearer (http bearer, apiKey)
Idempotency +9 pts — OpenAPI mutating operations declare an idempotency key — a header, a request-body property, or a named de-duplication token whose own description says so (verified); else common[].type matches /idempoten/i (documented)
A2A Agent Card +8 pts — a2a/-a2a.yml manifest, graded on conformance.grade against A2A 1.0.0
Registration Without a Human +6 pts — a `registration_endpoint` in the served RFC 8414 / OIDC discovery document
Delegated User Identity +6 pts — a served discovery document listing authorization_code in grant_types_supported (served), else an oauth2 authorizationCode flow or openIdConnect declared in an OpenAPI (documented)
Typed Event Surface +6 pts — AsyncAPI document, OR webhooks/callbacks objects in the as-published OpenAPI, OR common[].type includes Webhooks

7 more unmet checks in the Agent Readiness table above.

Kin Score — facets with the most composite points still available (weight × headroom):

Developer Ergonomics scores 11.9 — up to +17.6 composite points
Access Clarity scores 28.9 — up to +14.2 composite points
Contract Quality scores 48.4 — up to +12.9 composite points

Each check links to what satisfies it. Publish the artifact, or tell us where it already lives, and the score moves on the next scoring run.

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 the provider profile at artifacts.apis.io/semantic-scholar/apis.yml: open an issue on github.com/api-evangelist/semantic-scholar to ask a question or point us at an artifact you publish. Submit an artifact on GitHub — free → Manage your own listing — the Influence plan, $499/mo →

Markets this provider is in provisional

The Kin Score Market layer reads a provider inside its market: its position, and how deep its integrations go. Depth is only comparable within a position. Provisional and unweighted: not part of the Kin Score or agent readiness.

Market	Position	Depth	Registered MCP server	Declares compatibility
Browser Extension Stores (company-published Firefox add-ons; Chrome Web Store unreadable)	mixed	29.3	-	-
Raycast Store Extensions (first-party publishers + community-wrapped products)	mixed	29.3	-	-
Obsidian Community Plugins (third-party APIs the Obsidian plugin ecosystem integrates)	mixed	29.3	-	-

Registered MCP server and declares compatibility are report only — not weighted. Undeclared means we found nothing we can read, so there is no number: we never infer integrations.

Standards implemented 2

Standards this provider implements or carries. De facto ones are profiled and measured by the API Commons; formal ones come from the standards directory and are linked by the provider's own tags. The evidence column says how each claim was established — not that it was made.

Model Context Protocol (MCP)

measured — observed by APIs.io (verified)

OpenAPI

measured — observed by APIs.io (published)

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 6

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

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

MCP Servers 1

Model Context Protocol servers that expose these APIs to AI agents.

Semantic Scholar MCP Server

Remote MCP server at api.semanticscholar.org over HTTP; 8 tools listed.

MCP SERVER

Semantic Scholar API pricing

Not yet checked against Semantic Scholar's own pricing page. Compiled by API Evangelist on 2026-06-12; confirm before you rely on a figure. A free plan or tier is listed.

Plan	Price
Unauthenticated (Public) free	—
Authenticated (API Key) free	—
Dataset Access (API Key Required) free	—

Plan details, limits and sources →

Rate limits

: 100 requests
: 1 requests per second
: requests

Compiled by API Evangelist, not yet checked against Semantic Scholar's documentation. Rate-limit details →

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

Service Levels 1

Uptime the provider promises or reports, as SLA4OAI. Read from its own pages; APIs.io runs no monitors.

Semantic Scholar

SLA

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 — jsonschema 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 · 1 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: saas
  license_evidence:
    not_product:
    - allenai/s2-folks
  open_source: unknown
  commercial: true
  callable_host: true
  label: Hosted service · you call their endpoint
  confidence: low
  source:
  - openapi
  - pricing
  - repository-not-product
  generated: '2026-09-25'
  method: derived
accessModel:
  pricing: free
  onboarding: unknown
  trial: false
  try_now: false
  public: false
  label: Free
  confidence: low
  source:
  - plans
  - security
  generated: '2026-11-06'
  method: derived
image: https://kinlane-images.s3.amazonaws.com/shared/apis-json/icons/semantic-scholar.png
tags:
- Academic
- Research
- Paper
- Citations
- Authors
- Scientific Literature
- Artificial Intelligence
- Recommendations
- Research Data
- Open Access
tags_raw:
- Academic
- Research
- Papers
- Citations
- Authors
- Scientific Literature
- AI
- Recommendations
- Research Data
- Open Access
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

Semantic Scholar API — frequently asked questions

Does Semantic Scholar have an API?

Yes. APIs.io lists 6 APIs from Semantic Scholar, including Semantic Scholar Author Data API, Semantic Scholar Incremental Updates API and Semantic Scholar Paper Data API, and 3 more.

Is there an OpenAPI specification for the Semantic Scholar API?

Yes. APIs.io indexes 6 OpenAPI specifications for Semantic Scholar, each linked for download from this page.

How much does the Semantic Scholar API cost?

APIs.io lists 3 pricing plans for Semantic Scholar, with each plan's price, limits and inclusions under Pricing on this page.

Does Semantic Scholar have an MCP server?

Yes. APIs.io lists 1 MCP server for Semantic Scholar: Remote MCP server at api.semanticscholar.org over HTTP; 8 tools listed.

Is the Semantic Scholar API ready for AI agents?

Semantic Scholar has a Kin Score of 32.9 out of 100 (thin) and an Agent Readiness score of 33.9 (agent-ready), scored by API Evangelist on 2026-11-06.

Work with this as data

Every provider here is available over the APIs.io API and to AI agents over MCP.

MCP server

One button, every client — Claude, Cursor, VS Code and the rest.

https://apis.io/mcp

Tools for providers

9 MCP tools reach this

find_providersBrowse and filter every provider in the catalog.
get_provider_artifactsEvery artifact this provider publishes, grouped by type.
get_provider_operationsEvery operation across all of their OpenAPIs — one call instead of parsing every spec.
get_provider_toolsEvery MCP tool they ship, with the operation each wraps.
get_provider_evidenceHow each part of their score was established. Free — the basis for a claim should not sit behind it.
get_provider_ratingPRO — composite, band, trend and facet scores.
apis_io_searchSTART HERE — APIs, providers and tags for one query, each with its total.
resolveTurn a domain, URL or GitHub org into the provider it belongs to.
find_cohortsEvery scored population of providers in the catalog.

All 92 tools →

Call it yourself

curl for this page

This provider

curl "https://apis.io/api/v1/providers/semantic-scholar"

All providers

curl "https://apis.io/api/v1/providers?limit=25"

Every operation they expose

curl "https://apis.io/api/v1/providers/semantic-scholar/operations?limit=25"

How their score was established

curl "https://apis.io/api/v1/providers/semantic-scholar/evidence"

Calls without X-API-Key need no key. Calls with it need a paid plan — get a key.

Get an API key

Free tier, no form to fill in. Signing in shares your email address with us — we store it to create your key and to recognise you if you sign in with another provider. See our Privacy Policy and Terms.

GitHub Google LinkedIn

A second provider on the same verified email joins the account you already have.