Paper Search and Filtering
Search over more than 200 million papers with filters for journals and conferences, authors, publication types, and date range to narrow results by research context.
Semantic Scholar
ClaimSemantic Scholar is a free AI-powered research tool for scientific literature. Find papers, manage reading lists, follow new work, and use API and Semantic Reader.
Overview
Semantic Scholar is a free, AI-powered research tool for scientific literature based at Ai2. It helps scholars search papers, inspect citations, save and organize reading lists, and surface related research through recommendations, alerts, and topic exploration.
The product family also includes Semantic Scholar Academic Graph API for developers and Semantic Reader for reading papers in context. Together, these tools support discovery, reading, citation work, and application development across a large scholarly corpus.
Core Features
TLDR Summaries
View TLDRs on search results pages to get short, NLP-generated summaries of a paper’s objective and results, available for nearly 60 million papers in computer science, biology, and medicine.
Influential Citation Signals
Review Highly Influential Citations, which use a machine-learning model to identify cited work that appears to have significant impact on the citing publication.
Personal Library and Sharing
Save papers to an online library, organize them into folders, bulk export citations, and create public folders that collaborators can copy into their own libraries.
Research Feeds and Alerts
Turn on Research Feeds for folders to receive AI-powered paper recommendations in email and in the dashboard, with feedback controls for relevance ratings.
API and Augmented Reading Tools
Use the API and Semantic Reader products for developer access and richer reading, including paper search, citation details, contextual tooltips, in-line citations, and note-taking support.
Common Use Cases
Literature discovery
Find relevant papers across science using search filters, TLDRs, and influential citation cues when starting a literature review or expanding an existing reading list.
Reading list management
Store papers in folders, export citations in multiple formats, and share public folders with collaborators who can copy them into their own libraries.
Ongoing research monitoring
Set up paper, author, and research-feed alerts to track new citations, new papers, and personalized recommendations without manually checking each day.
Developer integrations
Use the Academic Graph API to build scholarly products that need paper, author, citation, venue, recommendation, or dataset access.
Contextual paper reading
Read supported papers with contextual citation cards, definitions, skimming highlights, and note-taking tools when reviewing technical literature.
Pros and Cons
Pros
- Free access to a large scholarly search index and research tools.
- Search, citation export, library organization, alerts, and recommendations are available in one product experience.
- The API offers public access to many endpoints, with documentation, tutorials, and datasets for developers.
- Semantic Reader adds contextual overlays such as citation cards, definitions, and in-line augmentations for supported papers.
Cons
- The pricing page provided in the source set returns a 404, so pricing and plan details are not confirmed here.
- Some features are limited in scope, such as Ask This Paper being tested only on English-language papers and available on limited papers.
- Semantic Reader availability varies by paper type and device; personalized inline citations require at least one paper in the user’s library and desktop use.
FAQ
What is Semantic Scholar used for?
Semantic Scholar is a free, AI-powered research tool for scientific literature. It helps users search papers, review citations, save papers to a library, and get recommendations and alerts.
Is Semantic Scholar free to use?
The product pages describe a free research tool with a public search experience and separate developer and reader products. The pricing URL provided returns a 404, so no paid-plan details are confirmed here.
What are the main limitations of Semantic Reader and Ask This Paper?
Semantic Reader is available for most arXiv papers, with a growing set of features. Some capabilities are limited by paper type, language, device, or account state, such as personalized inline citations and Ask This Paper.
What does the Semantic Scholar API provide?
The API provides access to authors, papers, citations, venues, recommendations, and datasets. Most endpoints are public without authentication, but some require an API key and higher rate limits.
Quick Facts
- Category
- AI research tool
- Primary users
- Scholars, researchers, and developers
- Platform
- Web app with API and reading tools
- Domain
- semanticscholar.org
- Availability
- Free; pricing details not confirmed
- Product family
- Search, API, Semantic Reader