scholar-search

Academic Scholar Search

Find papers with s2cli (Semantic Scholar), openalexcli (OpenAlex), and arxivy (arXiv), get high-quality BibTeX with dblpcli (DBLP). All tools run via uvx — no installation needed.

Finding Papers

Three tools for paper discovery, each with different strengths.

s2cli (Semantic Scholar)

Best for: paper recommendations, citation/reference networks, arXiv/DOI lookups, citation count filtering.

# Search by keyword
uvx s2cli search "attention mechanism" --limit 10 --json
uvx s2cli search "transformers" --year 2020-2024 --min-citations 100 --json

# Filter options: --year, --venue, --field, --min-citations, --open-access

# Get paper details by ID (supports S2 ID, DOI, arXiv, CorpusId)
uvx s2cli paper ARXIV:1706.03762 --json
uvx s2cli paper DOI:10.18653/v1/N18-3011 --json

# Citation network
uvx s2cli citations ARXIV:1706.03762 --limit 20 --json   # papers citing this
uvx s2cli references ARXIV:1706.03762 --limit 20 --json  # papers cited by this

# Recommendations based on a seed paper
uvx s2cli recommend ARXIV:1706.03762 --limit 10 --json
uvx s2cli recommend ARXIV:1706.03762 --pool all-cs --json  # pool: 'recent' or 'all-cs'

# Author search and papers
uvx s2cli author search "Yoshua Bengio" --json
uvx s2cli author papers <author_id> --json

openalexcli (OpenAlex)

Best for: broadest coverage (260M+ works), institution/journal queries, group-by aggregation, ORCID lookups, date range filtering.

# Search by keyword
uvx openalexcli search "attention mechanism" --limit 10 --json
uvx openalexcli search "transformers" --from-date 2020-01-01 --min-citations 100 --json

# Filter options: --filter, --from-date, --to-date, --min-citations, --open-access, --type, --sort, --group-by

# Get work by OpenAlex ID
uvx openalexcli work W2741809807 --json

# Citation network
uvx openalexcli citations W2741809807 --limit 20 --json
uvx openalexcli references W2741809807 --limit 20 --json

# Author search and works
uvx openalexcli author search "Yoshua Bengio" --json
uvx openalexcli author works <author_id> --json

# Institution queries
uvx openalexcli institution search "MIT" --json
uvx openalexcli institution works <institution_id> --json

# Journal/source queries
uvx openalexcli source search "Nature" --json
uvx openalexcli source works <source_id> --json

# Aggregation (unique to OpenAlex)
uvx openalexcli search "deep learning" --group-by publication_year --json

arxivy (arXiv)

Best for: searching arXiv directly, getting paper details by arXiv ID, browsing recent submissions in a category. No API key needed.

# Search by keyword
uvx arxivy search "attention mechanism" --limit 10
uvx arxivy search "transformers" -c cs.CL -n 20
uvx arxivy search "diffusion models" --sort submittedDate

# Include abstracts in results
uvx arxivy search "RLHF" -c cs.AI --abstract

# Get paper details by arXiv ID (accepts bare IDs, versioned IDs, or full URLs)
uvx arxivy paper 1706.03762
uvx arxivy paper 1706.03762 2010.11929 1810.04805   # compare multiple
uvx arxivy paper 1706.03762 --json

# Browse recent submissions in a category
uvx arxivy new cs.AI
uvx arxivy new cs.CL -n 20 --abstract

# BibTeX export (fallback — prefer dblpcli for curated entries)
uvx arxivy bibtex 1706.03762
uvx arxivy bibtex 1706.03762 2010.11929 > refs.bib

Note on output: arxivy auto-detects whether stdout is a terminal. In a terminal it shows Rich tables; when piped it outputs JSON. Use --json to force JSON in a terminal.

Which tool to pick

Need	Use
Recommendations for a paper	s2cli recommend
Citation/reference graph traversal	s2cli citations / s2cli references
arXiv ID or DOI lookup	s2cli paper or arxivy paper
Search arXiv directly (by category, recency)	arxivy search
Browse new arXiv submissions	arxivy new
Broadest search coverage	openalexcli search
Filter by institution or journal	openalexcli institution / openalexcli source
Aggregate stats (group-by)	openalexcli search --group-by
ORCID-based author lookup	openalexcli author get

Getting BibTeX

Use dblpcli for high-quality BibTeX sourced directly from DBLP (curated, consistent formatting). If a paper isn't in DBLP (e.g. a very recent arXiv preprint), fall back to uvx arxivy bibtex <arxiv_id>.

Workflow

1. Find the paper's DBLP key by searching:

   uvx dblpcli search "attention is all you need" --format json
   

   The key field in results (e.g., conf/nips/VaswaniSPUJGKP17) is what you need.

2. Export BibTeX:

   uvx dblpcli bibtex conf/nips/VaswaniSPUJGKP17
   

3. Batch export (multiple keys):

   uvx dblpcli bibtex conf/nips/VaswaniSPUJGKP17 journals/jmlr/KingmaB14
   

4. Custom citation key:

   uvx dblpcli bibtex conf/nips/VaswaniSPUJGKP17 --key vaswani2017attention
   

5. Save to file:

   uvx dblpcli bibtex conf/nips/VaswaniSPUJGKP17 --output refs.bib
   

Full dblpcli command reference

# Search publications (supports AND/OR operators, author: prefix)
uvx dblpcli search "transformer attention" --format json
uvx dblpcli search "deep learning" --year 2020-2024 --format json
uvx dblpcli search "author:Vaswani" --limit 10 --format json

# Get publication details
uvx dblpcli pub conf/nips/VaswaniSPUJGKP17 --format json

# Author workflow
uvx dblpcli author search "Geoffrey Hinton" --format json    # find PID
uvx dblpcli author get <pid> --format json                   # author details
uvx dblpcli author pubs <pid> --format json                  # list publications
uvx dblpcli author bibtex <pid>                              # BibTeX for ALL papers

# Venue queries
uvx dblpcli venue search "NeurIPS" --format json
uvx dblpcli venue pubs conf/nips --year 2023 --format json

Common Workflows

Literature survey

1. Search broadly: uvx s2cli search "topic" --json or uvx openalexcli search "topic" --json
2. Find key papers, explore their citations: uvx s2cli citations <id> --json
3. Get recommendations: uvx s2cli recommend <id> --json
4. For each paper, find the DBLP key: uvx dblpcli search "paper title" --format json
5. Export BibTeX: uvx dblpcli bibtex <key1> <key2> <key3> --output refs.bib

Build a bibliography from a list of papers

1. For each paper title, search DBLP: uvx dblpcli search "title" --format json
2. Collect DBLP keys from results
3. Batch export: uvx dblpcli bibtex <key1> <key2> ... --output refs.bib

Citation network exploration

1. Start with a seed paper: uvx s2cli paper ARXIV:1706.03762 --json
2. Get citing papers: uvx s2cli citations ARXIV:1706.03762 --limit 20 --json
3. Get referenced papers: uvx s2cli references ARXIV:1706.03762 --limit 20 --json
4. Find related work: uvx s2cli recommend ARXIV:1706.03762 --json

Get all papers by an author

• From DBLP: uvx dblpcli author search "Name" --format json → uvx dblpcli author bibtex <pid>
• From Semantic Scholar: uvx s2cli author search "Name" --json → uvx s2cli author papers <id> --json
• From OpenAlex: uvx openalexcli author search "Name" --json → uvx openalexcli author works <id> --json

Configuration

Variable	Purpose	Required
S2_API_KEY	Semantic Scholar API key (higher rate limits)	No
OPENALEX_EMAIL	OpenAlex polite pool (faster responses)	No

Both tools work without these but may hit rate limits on heavy use.

When to Use

Use this skill when the user asks about:

• Finding academic papers or research on a topic
• Citations, references, or bibliography
• BibTeX entries or .bib files
• Paper recommendations or related work
• Author publication lists
• Literature reviews or surveys
• DOI, arXiv, or paper lookups
• Browsing recent arXiv submissions in a category