Semantic Scholar
A free academic search engine from the Allen Institute for AI with paper summaries, citation graphs and personalised research feeds.
What is Semantic Scholar?
Semantic Scholar is a free search engine for research papers built by the Allen Institute for AI. It shows short AI summaries of papers, highlights influential citations and links to free PDFs where available.
You can create a library and research feeds that recommend new papers. It is a search engine rather than a chatbot.
Key features
How to get started
- Go to semanticscholar.org.
- Search your topic and read the TLDRs.
- Save papers to a library to get recommendations.
An essential free tool for finding research.
Best for
- Finding papers
- Following research topics
- Students and researchers
Strengths
- Completely free
- One-sentence TLDR summaries
Limits
- Less conversational than chat tools
- Coverage gaps in some fields
Questions
Is Semantic Scholar free?
Yes. Semantic Scholar is free to use.
What is Semantic Scholar best for?
Semantic Scholar is best for: Finding papers, Following research topics, and Students and researchers.
What are the best alternatives to Semantic Scholar?
Popular alternatives in Research & Learning include Perplexity, NotebookLM, Elicit, Consensus, and Scite.
Pricing and features change often. Confirm details on the official Semantic Scholar website.