# Semantic Scholar

**Canonical:** https://apis.io/providers/semantic-scholar/  
**Website:** https://www.semanticscholar.org  
**APIs profiled:** 6

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.

## Kin Score — 45.0 / 100 (developing)

Scored 2026-08-20 under rubric 0.12.0. Trend: flat (+0.0 from 45.0).

| Facet | Score |
|---|---|
| Discoverability | 74.1 |
| Contract Quality | 54.8 |
| Governance | 9.8 |
| Contract Governance | 9.8 |
| Operational Transparency | 50.0 |
| Developer Ergonomics | 11.9 |
| Commercial Clarity | 60.5 |
| Access Clarity | 60.5 |

Regulatory layer — **Education & Research**: 38.9 (matched via tags).

## Agent readiness — 30.3 (agent-aware)

| Dimension | Value |
|---|---|
| Spec Presence | yes |
| Agentic Access | derived |
| Reversibility Documented | no |
| MCP Server | no |
| Auth Clarity | no |
| Idempotency | no |
| Error Semantics | verified |
| OpenAPI Examples | partial |
| Rate Limit Signal | documented |
| Event Surface Described | no |
| Agent Skills | no |
| Well Known Catalog | no |
| Consent Identity | no |
| Agent Card | no |
| Dry Run Mode | no |

## Access

Unknown — onboarding: unknown, pricing: unknown, trial: no (confidence: low).

## APIs (6)

- **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.

## Agentic access (1)

- **Semantic Scholar Agentic Access** — 20 operations · 3 acting

## Security (2)

- **Semantic Scholar Domain Security** — TLSv1.3 · DMARC
- **Semantic Scholar Vulnerability Disclosure** — security.txt · contact published

## Plans (1)

- **Semantic Scholar Plans Pricing**

## Tags

Academic, Research, Papers, Citations, Authors, Scientific Literature, Artificial Intelligence, Recommendations

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Profiled by [API Evangelist](https://apievangelist.com) and published on [APIs.io](https://apis.io/providers/semantic-scholar/). Scores are computed from the provider's own public artifacts under a published rubric.