Semantic Scholar API MCP server

Made with mcp-python-sdk

> [!IMPORTANT]

> if you are still using FastMCP version of this mcp server, please consider pull this repo again and update to newer versions as FastMCP is already deprecated.

Usage

Requirements: `pip install -r requirements.txt`

Run `mcp dev path/to/semantic-scholar-plugin.py` to initialize the server.

Run `mcp install path/to/semantic-scholar-plugin.py` to install to claude or add following to claude/cline config:

"semantic-scholar": {
      "command": "uv",
      "args": [
        "run",
        "--with",
        "mcp",
        "mcp",
        "run",
        "/path/to/semantic-scholar-plugin.py"
      ]
    }

> [!NOTE]

> Currently using `uv` with `mcp` seems to break certain Linux/macOS version of Claude-desktop, you might need to set as:

> ```json

> "semantic-scholar": {

> "command": "/path/to/mcp",

> "args": [

> "run",

> "/path/to/semantic-scholar-plugin.py"

> ]

> }

> ```

> instead, with `/path/to/mcp` got from running `which mcp` in terminal

API Key

To use the Semantic Scholar API with higher rate limits, you can set your API key as an environment variable:

export SEMANTIC_SCHOLAR_API_KEY="your_api_key"

or set by adding an `env` key in mcp settings by:

"semantic-scholar": {
      "command": ...,
      "args": ...,
      "env": {
        "SEMANTIC_SCHOLAR_API_KEY": "your_api_key"
      }
}

You can get an API key by filling out the form at: https://www.semanticscholar.org/product/api

Suggested Agent System prompt

See: benhaotang/my_agent_system_prompt, the AI pre-research agent that can make full use of this mcp server.

Known issues

• If you see things like `INFO Processing request of type __init__.py:431 ListToolsRequest` in cline, you can ignore them as this will not affect it from working, this is because cline parse tool list together with console debug infos, and current python-sdk cannot disable console messages. This will not affect any function calling part other than seeing this warning.