Semantic Scholar is a free academic search engine from the Allen Institute for AI. It helps you search for papers by topic, view authors, citations, abstracts, and related work, rather than simply returning a list of keyword-based links. If you need a broader selection of tools, see AI tools for research papers.
Literature search without guessing every term
The service is useful at the start of a research project: you can enter a topic, an author's name, or a paper title and quickly find relevant publications. Paper cards show abstracts, years, authors, citations, and links to similar work.
Citations, authors, and related research
Semantic Scholar helps you understand which works are frequently cited, which papers are connected to each other, and where to explore next on a topic. It is convenient for literature reviews, finding foundational sources, and checking whether an important publication has been missed.
Where it can be useful
selecting sources for a research paper, term paper, or thesis finding recent publications on a research topic checking authors, citations, and related work quickly getting familiar with a field before reading PDFs
