mcpbeat

Literature Search

lingzhi227/literature-search

Search academic literature using Semantic Scholar, arXiv, and OpenAlex APIs. Returns structured JSONL with title, authors, year, venue, abstract, citations, and BibTeX. Use when the user needs to find papers, check related work, or build a bibliography.

7k tokens
context cost
the whole folder, loaded on every use
4
files
ships runnable scripts
0
copies elsewhere
how many repositories repackaged it
256
stars on the repo
on the repository, not the skill itself

Install

one command, takes just this skill from the repository 
npx skills add https://github.com/lingzhi227/agent-research-skills --skill literature-search

The instruction itself

14 sections, as written by the author

Literature Search

Search multiple academic databases to find relevant papers.

Input

  • $ARGUMENTS — The search query (natural language)

Scripts

Semantic Scholar (primary — best for ML/AI, has BibTeX)

python ~/.claude/skills/deep-research/scripts/search_semantic_scholar.py \
  --query "QUERY" --max-results 20 --year-range 2022-2026 \
  --api-key "$(grep S2_API_Key /Users/lingzhi/Code/keys.md 2>/dev/null | cut -d: -f2 | tr -d ' ')" \
  -o results_s2.jsonl

Key flags: --peer-reviewed-only, --top-conferences, --min-citations N, --venue NeurIPS ICML

arXiv (latest preprints)

python ~/.claude/skills/deep-research/scripts/search_arxiv.py \
  --query "QUERY" --max-results 10 -o results_arxiv.jsonl

OpenAlex (broadest coverage, free, no API key)

python ~/.claude/skills/literature-search/scripts/search_openalex.py \
  --query "QUERY" --max-results 20 --year-range 2022-2026 \
  --min-citations 5 -o results_openalex.jsonl

Merge & Deduplicate

python ~/.claude/skills/deep-research/scripts/paper_db.py merge \
  --inputs results_s2.jsonl results_arxiv.jsonl results_openalex.jsonl \
  --output merged.jsonl

CrossRef (DOI-based lookup, broadest type coverage)

python ~/.claude/skills/literature-search/scripts/search_crossref.py \
  --query "QUERY" --rows 10 --output results_crossref.jsonl

Key flags: --bibtex (output .bib format), --rows N

Download arXiv Source (get .tex files)

python ~/.claude/skills/literature-search/scripts/download_arxiv_source.py \
  --title "Paper Title" --output-dir arxiv_papers/

Key flags: --arxiv-id 1706.03762, --metadata, --max-results N

Generate BibTeX from results

python ~/.claude/skills/deep-research/scripts/bibtex_manager.py \
  --jsonl merged.jsonl --output references.bib

Workflow

  • Expand the user's query into 2-4 complementary search queries
  • Run Semantic Scholar search (primary) with expanded queries
  • Run arXiv for very recent preprints (< 3 months)
  • Optionally run OpenAlex for broader coverage
  • Merge and deduplicate results
  • Rank by: citations (0.3) + recency (0.3) + venue quality (0.2) + relevance (0.2)
  • Present structured results table

Venue Quality Tiers

Tier 1: NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR, ACL, EMNLP, NAACL, CVPR, ICCV, ECCV, KDD, AAAI, IJCAI, SIGIR, WWW

Tier 2: AISTATS, UAI, COLT, COLING, EACL, WACV, JMLR, TACL

Tier 3: Workshops, arXiv preprints — mark with (preprint)

Output Format

Present results as a table + detailed entries with BibTeX keys. Always note preprint status.

Related Skills

  • Downstream: citation-management, literature-review, related-work-writing
  • See also: deep-research, novelty-assessment

How to use it

Copy the folder

Take lingzhi227/literature-search from the repository into ~/.claude/skills for personal use, or into .claude/skills inside a project.

Check the name does not clash

The agent identifies a skill by the name field in its header. Two skills with the same name cannot sit side by side — one of them will be ignored.