semanticscholar
Unofficial Python client library for Semantic Scholar APIs.
Decision gist · record as of 2026-08-14
Yes. The package has low install friction, active maintenance, permissive licensing, no known vulnerabilities, and fills a clear need for programmatic access to Semantic Scholar data. It's suitable for research, academic, and commercial projects that require scholarly metadata retrieval.AI-flagged interpretation of the facts on this page — verify before relying
Before you install
- Requires Python 3.10 or later; API access depends on Semantic Scholar's service availability and rate limits.
- Low install friction with only two runtime dependencies (tenacity and httpx).
- Marked as active maintenance with a recent release in March 2026, supporting current Python versions from 3.10 through 3.14.
License · maintenance · safety
MIT (permissive) — MIT license (permissive) means you can use, modify, and distribute this library freely with minimal restrictions, making it suitable for both open-source and commercial projects.
last release 2026-03-29 (138 days)
0 known vulnerabilities (OSV.dev, 2026-08-14) · 114,109 downloads/mo, #12,312 on PyPI
Alternatives
Verify before relying
pip install semanticscholar
from semanticscholar import SemanticScholar
sch = SemanticScholar()
paper = sch.get_paper('10.1093/mind/lix.236.433')
print(paper.title)- Whether asynchronous request support is documented with concrete examples in the library's usage guide.
- Rate limiting behavior and any API key requirements for the Semantic Scholar endpoints.
- Performance characteristics when handling large paginated result sets.
What it is and what it does
semanticscholar is an unofficial Python wrapper around Semantic Scholar's public APIs, designed to simplify access to academic metadata, recommendations, and datasets. It abstracts away HTTP details by providing a typed client interface that handles pagination automatically and supports both synchronous and asynchronous request patterns.
The library is intended for researchers, developers, and data scientists who need to programmatically fetch paper metadata, citations, and related academic information. It depends on httpx for HTTP communication and tenacity for request retry logic, making it suitable for production use where network reliability matters.
Use it for
- Fetch metadata for academic papers by DOI or ID to build a local research database.
- Query the Semantic Scholar Recommendations API to discover related papers for a given publication.
- Retrieve dataset information from Semantic Scholar's Datasets API for research reproducibility.
- Build a citation graph or co-authorship analysis tool using the Academic Graph API.
- Integrate paper search and metadata into a research management or literature review application.
Worth the install?
AI-flagged interpretation of the facts on this page. Verify before relying on it.
Yes.
The package has low install friction, active maintenance, permissive licensing, no known vulnerabilities, and fills a clear need for programmatic access to Semantic Scholar data. It's suitable for research, academic, and commercial projects that require scholarly metadata retrieval.
Install
semanticscholar on PyPI
Before you install
Low install friction with only two runtime dependencies (tenacity and httpx). Marked as active maintenance with a recent release in March 2026, supporting current Python versions from 3.10 through 3.14.
Requires Python 3.10 or later; API access depends on Semantic Scholar's service availability and rate limits.
License in practice
MIT license (permissive) means you can use, modify, and distribute this library freely with minimal restrictions, making it suitable for both open-source and commercial projects.
Quickstart
pip install semanticscholar
from semanticscholar import SemanticScholar
sch = SemanticScholar()
paper = sch.get_paper('10.1093/mind/lix.236.433')
print(paper.title)Verify before relying
- Whether asynchronous request support is documented with concrete examples in the library's usage guide.
- Rate limiting behavior and any API key requirements for the Semantic Scholar endpoints.
- Performance characteristics when handling large paginated result sets.
Package facts
| License | MIT permissive |
| Python support | Supports the current Python release >=3.10 |
| Install friction | Low. Pure-Python wheel |
| Runtime dependencies | 2 packagestenacityhttpx |
| Maintenance | Actively maintained 138 days since the last release |
| First released | |
| Downloads | 114,109 / month, #12,312 on PyPI 30-day window, as of 2026-08-14 |
| Known vulnerabilities | None known OSV.dev, checked 2026-08-14 |
| Classifiers | Development Status :: 4 - BetaIntended Audience :: DevelopersIntended Audience :: Science/ResearchLicense :: OSI Approved :: MIT LicenseProgramming Language :: PythonProgramming Language :: Python :: 3Programming Language :: Python :: 3.10Programming Language :: Python :: 3.11Programming Language :: Python :: 3.12Programming Language :: Python :: 3.13Programming Language :: Python :: 3.14Topic :: Software Development :: Libraries :: Python Modules |
Evidence: semanticscholar-0.12.0-py3-none-any.whl
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