Semantic Scholar FAQs

Question 1

What is the Semantic Scholar API?

Accepted Answer

The Semantic Scholar API provides programmatic access to the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph, enabling users to search for academic papers, authors, and analyze scholarly connections for various research purposes.

Question 2

What are the primary features of this tool?

Accepted Answer

Key features include comprehensive search for academic papers and authors, detailed information retrieval, advanced citation and reference analysis, text snippet search within papers, and intelligent open-access PDF downloading with smart naming and metadata.

Question 3

Is an API key required to use Semantic Scholar?

Accepted Answer

An API key is optional but highly recommended. While you can use the API without one (sharing a public rate limit), obtaining a free API key provides dedicated, higher rate limits for more consistent and reliable performance.

Question 4

Can I download academic papers using this API?

Accepted Answer

Yes, the tool supports downloading open-access PDFs directly. It automatically names files based on the paper's title and year, and embeds crucial metadata like title, authors, and publication year into the PDF properties.

Question 5

How does this tool support Data Science & ML workflows?

Accepted Answer

It offers data scientists and ML engineers a powerful way to programmatically discover, analyze, and manage relevant academic literature. This streamlines research for model development, trend analysis, and staying current with the latest advancements in AI and ML fields.

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