Semantic Scholar Paper Search

Search topic or paper ID: $ARGUMENTS

Role & Positioning

This skill is the published venue counterpart to

/arxiv

Skill	Source	Best for
`/arxiv`	arXiv API	Latest preprints, cutting-edge unrefereed work
`/semantic-scholar`	Semantic Scholar API	Published journal/conference papers (IEEE, ACM, Springer, etc.) with citation counts, venue info, TLDR

Do NOT duplicate arXiv's job. If results contain an

externalIds.ArXiv

field, the paper is also on arXiv — note this but do not re-fetch from arXiv.

Constants

MAX_RESULTS = 10 — Default number of search results.
FETCH_SCRIPT —
```
tools/semantic_scholar_fetch.py
```
relative to the project root. Fall back to inline Python if not found.

DEFAULT_FILTERS — For general research queries, apply these by default to reduce noise:

--fields-of-study "Computer Science,Engineering"

--publication-types JournalArticle,Conference

Overrides (append to arguments):
/semantic-scholar "topic" - max: 20
— return up to 20 results
/semantic-scholar "topic" - type: journal
— only journal articles
/semantic-scholar "topic" - type: conference
— only conference papers
/semantic-scholar "topic" - min-citations: 50
— only highly-cited papers
/semantic-scholar "topic" - year: 2022-
— papers from 2022 onward
/semantic-scholar "topic" - fields: all
— remove default field-of-study filter
/semantic-scholar "topic" - sort: citations
— bulk search sorted by citation count
/semantic-scholar "DOI:10.1109/..."
— fetch a single paper by DOI

Workflow

Step 1: Parse Arguments

Parse

$ARGUMENTS

for directives:

Query or ID: main search term, or a paper identifier:

DOI:
```
10.1109/TWC.2024.1234567
```

Semantic Scholar ID:

f9314fd99be5f2b1b3efcfab87197d578160d553

ArXiv:
```
ARXIV:2006.10685
```
Corpus:
```
CorpusId:219792180
```

- max: N
: override MAX_RESULTS

- type: journal|conference|review|all
: map to

--publication-types

- min-citations: N
: map to
```
--min-citations
```
- year: RANGE
: map to
```
--year
```
(e.g.
```
2022-
```
,
```
2020-2024
```
)
- fields: FIELDS
: override
```
--fields-of-study
```
(use
```
all
```
to remove filter)

- sort: citations|date
: use

search-bulk

with

--sort citationCount:desc

publicationDate:desc

If the argument matches a DOI pattern (

10.XXXX/...

), a Semantic Scholar ID (40-char hex), or a prefixed ID (

ARXIV:...

CorpusId:...

), skip search and go directly to Step 3.

Step 2: Search Papers

Locate the fetch script:

bash

SCRIPT=$(find tools/ -name "semantic_scholar_fetch.py" 2>/dev/null | head -1)
[ -z "$SCRIPT" ] && SCRIPT=$(find ~/.claude/skills/semantic-scholar/ -name "semantic_scholar_fetch.py" 2>/dev/null | head -1)

Standard search (default — relevance-ranked):

bash

python3 "$SCRIPT" search "QUERY" --max MAX_RESULTS \
  --fields-of-study "Computer Science,Engineering" \
  --publication-types JournalArticle,Conference

Bulk search (when

- sort:

is specified, or MAX_RESULTS > 100):

bash

python3 "$SCRIPT" search-bulk "QUERY" --max MAX_RESULTS \
  --sort citationCount:desc \
  --fields-of-study "Computer Science" \
  --year "2020-"

semantic_scholar_fetch.py

is not found, fall back to inline Python using

urllib

against

https://api.semanticscholar.org/graph/v1/paper/search

Recommended filter combos (from testing):

Goal	Flags
High-quality journal papers	`--publication-types JournalArticle --min-citations 10`
CS/EE papers, recent	`--fields-of-study "Computer Science,Engineering" --year "2022-"`
Foundational / high-impact	`search-bulk --sort citationCount:desc --fields-of-study "Computer Science"`
Conference papers only	`--publication-types Conference`

Note:
--venue
requires exact venue names (e.g. "IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing"), not partial matches like "IEEE". Avoid using
--venue
in automated flows — prefer
--publication-types
+
--fields-of-study
.

Step 3: Fetch Details for a Specific Paper

When a single paper ID is requested:

bash

python3 "$SCRIPT" paper "PAPER_ID"

Where PAPER_ID can be:

DOI:
```
10.1109/TSP.2021.3071210
```
ArXiv:
```
ARXIV:2006.10685
```
CorpusId:
```
CorpusId:219792180
```

S2 ID:

f9314fd99be5f2b1b3efcfab87197d578160d553

Step 4: De-duplicate Against arXiv

For each result, check

externalIds.ArXiv

If present → paper is also on arXiv. Note this in output but do NOT re-fetch via
```
/arxiv
```
.
If absent → paper is venue-only (e.g. IEEE without preprint). This is the unique value of this skill.

Step 5: Present Results

Present results as a table:

text

| # | Title | Venue | Year | Citations | Authors | Type |
|---|-------|-------|------|-----------|---------|------|
| 1 | Deep Learning Enabled... | IEEE Trans. Signal Process. | 2021 | 1364 | Xie et al. | Journal |

For each paper, also show:

DOI link:
```
https://doi.org/DOI
```
(for IEEE/ACM papers, this is the canonical link)
Open Access PDF: if
```
openAccessPdf.url
```
is non-empty, show it
TLDR: if available, show the one-line summary
Also on arXiv: if
```
externalIds.ArXiv
```
exists, note the arXiv ID

Step 6: Detailed Summary

For each paper (or top 5 if many results):

markdown

## [Title]

- **Venue**: [venue name] ([publicationVenue.type]: journal/conference)
- **Year**: [year] | **Citations**: [citationCount]
- **Authors**: [full author list]
- **DOI**: [doi link]
- **Fields**: [fieldsOfStudy]
- **TLDR**: [tldr.text if available]
- **Abstract**: [abstract]
- **Open Access**: [openAccessPdf.url or "Not available"]
- **Also on arXiv**: [ArXiv ID if exists, else "No"]

Step 7: Update Research Wiki (if active)

Required when
research-wiki/
exists in the project; skip silently otherwise. Ingest the papers presented to the user. For results with an

externalIds.ArXiv

field, use

--arxiv-id

; for venue-only papers (no arXiv mirror — common for IEEE/ACM), fall back to manual metadata:

if [ -d research-wiki/ ]:
    for each paper in results:
        if paper.externalIds.ArXiv:
            python3 tools/research_wiki.py ingest_paper research-wiki/ \
                --arxiv-id "<ArXiv>"
        else:
            python3 tools/research_wiki.py ingest_paper research-wiki/ \
                --title "<title>" --authors "<authors joined by , >" \
                --year <year> --venue "<venue>" \
                [--external-id-doi "<externalIds.DOI>"]

The helper handles slug / dedup / page / index / log — do not handwrite
papers/<slug>.md
. See

shared-references/integration-contract.md

. Backfill with

/research-wiki sync --arxiv-ids <id1>,<id2>,...

for arXiv-available papers.

Step 8: Final Output

Summarize what was done:

```
Found N published papers for "query"
```

Filters applied: [publication types, fields, year range, etc.]

```
N papers are venue-only (not on arXiv)
```
```
Wiki-ingested N papers
```
(if
```
research-wiki/
```
was present)

Suggest follow-up skills:

text

/arxiv "topic"           - search arXiv preprints (complements this search)
/research-lit "topic"    - multi-source review: Zotero + local PDFs + arXiv + S2
/novelty-check "idea"    - verify novelty against literature

Key Rules

Default to filtered search: Always apply
```
--fields-of-study
```
and
```
--publication-types
```
unless user says
```
- fields: all
```
. Without filters, S2 returns cross-discipline noise (linguistics, psychology, etc.).
Citation count is gold: S2's citation data is its main advantage over arXiv. Always show
```
citationCount
```
prominently and use it to rank/prioritize results.
Venue metadata matters: Show
```
venue
```
and
```
publicationVenue.type
```
(journal vs conference) — this helps users assess paper quality.
DOI is the canonical ID for published papers: Always show DOI links for IEEE/ACM/Springer papers.
Rate limiting: S2 API without key is heavily rate-limited (~1 req/s, strict cooldown). If HTTP 429 occurs, wait and retry. Recommend users set
```
SEMANTIC_SCHOLAR_API_KEY
```
env var for higher limits (free at https://www.semanticscholar.org/product/api#api-key-form).
TLDR may be null: Some publishers (notably IEEE) elide the TLDR field. Fall back to showing the first sentence of the abstract.
openAccessPdf may be empty: Many IEEE papers are closed access. Always provide the DOI link as fallback.
If the S2 API is unreachable, suggest using
```
/arxiv
```
or
```
/research-lit "topic" - sources: web
```
as fallback.

semantic-scholar

NPX Install

Tags

SKILL.md Content

Semantic Scholar Paper Search

Role & Positioning

Constants

Workflow

Step 1: Parse Arguments

Step 2: Search Papers

Step 3: Fetch Details for a Specific Paper

Step 4: De-duplicate Against arXiv

Step 5: Present Results

Step 6: Detailed Summary

Step 7: Update Research Wiki (if active)

Step 8: Final Output

Key Rules