Semantic Scholar API - Overview

Providing a reliable source of scholarly data for developers

Build projects that accelerate scientific progress with the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph API

Illustration: Data Transfer via API
illustration: a decorative representation of our research

Why use Semantic Scholar API?

The Semantic Scholar REST API allows you to find and explore scientific publication data about authors, papers, citations, venues, and more. The API is organized into the following services:

  • Academic Graph: Provides data about authors, papers, citations, venues, SPECTER2 embeddings, and more that allows you to link directly to the corresponding page on semanticscholar.org for more information.
  • Recommendations: Provides recommended papers similar to a given paper.
  • Datasets: Provides downloadable links of datasets in the academic graph.

We are actively developing new features based on user demand. To learn more about our API service, read The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform paper. To get the latest news and updates, subscribe to our API newsletter.

Get Started
Semantic Scholar providing infrastructure for the research ecosystem is exciting as it enables partners like Litmaps to focus on creating great experiences for end users. We found the Semantic Scholar API and bulk data, clear and straightforward to use. The documentation, examples, and easy access to the raw data allowed us to move quickly on data integration, and get back to solving problems for our users.
Profile Photo: Axton Pitt

Axton PittCo-founder and CTO, Litmaps

Profile Photo: Eddie Smolyansky

Eddie SmolyanskyCo-founder, Connected Papers

Since day 1 Connected Papers has been built on top of the Semantic Scholar Open Corpus and APIs, and heavily relies on them to provide paper discovery and search capabilities to our users. The APIs are well maintained, frequently updated, fast, and easy to use. The team is extremely responsive and has supported our growth every step of the way from open beta to a million users. This massive resource given to the public for free is a great driver for innovation in science and we are proud to be a part of the next layer of tools being built on top of it.
We are a startup that tracks the evolution and progress of AI research. Thanks to the Semantic Scholar API pulling in the latest references to papers from top AI conferences has been a really simple task. Otherwise, it would have taken much more time and effort.
Profile Photo: Eduardo Antonio Espinosa Grimaldo

Eduardo Antonio Espinosa GrimaldoFounder, Stateoftheart AI

Elman Mansimov

Elman MansimovCo-Owner, Sourcely and Yomu

We at Sourcely have migrated to the Semantic Scholar API to provide academic references to students writing their essays, and our experience working with academic references APIs has never been better. Not only is the Semantic Scholar API very easy to use, quick, and reliable, but it also incorporates a lot of additional metadata like PDF URLs, abstract, summarization, and more, that are not easily accessible with other academic reference providers like Google Scholar. Students love the references provided by Semantic Scholar API and their experience on Sourcely has improved since migration. On top of that, the Semantic Scholar team has been very helpful in answering our questions and considering our feedback.

Access Our Continually Updating Corpus

214 Million
Papers
2.49 Billion
Citations
79 Million
Authors

Do I need an API Key?

Most Semantic Scholar endpoints are available to the public without authentication, but they are rate-limited to 1000 requests per second shared among all unauthenticated users. Requests may also be further throttled during periods of heavy use.

Certain endpoints require authentication via an API key, and authenticated users have access to higher rate limits. As a best practice, we recommend including your API key with every request. Using an API key will also help us better support you when you need additional help.

The introductory rate limit for an API key is 1 RPS on all endpoints. If you find yourself needing a higher rate limit, please contact us.

You will receive your private API key via email. Do not share your key with anyone.

Request an API key
illustration of an key with data bits around it

Featured API News

Illustration - Semantic Scholar API

Semantic Scholar Releases New Recommendations API

Introducing a new public service that can recommend recently published papers or preprints to researchers based on a learned model of their topical interests.

New Academic Graph Datasets Released From Semantic Scholar

The new datasets give users access to the full range of data exposed in our API for our entire corpus.

Illustration - Peer Review Papers

Conference Peer Review with the Semantic Scholar API

We are excited to release the first version of our new service specifically for peer review as part of the Semantic Scholar API.

Join the Semantic Scholar API Community Slack Channel

Get Started