Search Papers by Topic
Find relevant academic papers on any research topic across millions of scholarly publications.
Build Literature Reviews
Systematically survey the research landscape on a topic by searching papers and tracing citation networks.
ToolA literature review requires comprehensive coverage -- you need to find the seminal papers, trace how ideas evolved, identify current debates, and spot gaps in the research. Doing this manually across databases, journals, and preprint servers takes weeks.
Combining search_papers and paper_details enables a systematic approach. Search to find the initial set of relevant papers, then use paper_details to examine their citations and references. Follow the citation chain to discover papers you would have missed in keyword searches alone.
Graduate students writing theses, researchers starting new projects, grant writers establishing significance, and reviewers assessing the state of a field all need thorough literature reviews. The combination of search and citation tracking covers the topic from multiple angles -- keywords, references, and citation chains.
Agent Guides
Claude
- Connect ToolRouter: claude mcp add toolrouter -- npx -y toolrouter-mcp
- Ask Claude: "Search for papers on federated learning privacy using academic-research"
- Claude returns an initial set of relevant papers
ChatGPT
- Configure ToolRouter in ChatGPT
- Ask: "Search for foundational papers on transfer learning"
- ChatGPT returns key papers in the field
Copilot
- Add ToolRouter to Copilot MCP config
- In Copilot Chat: "Search for papers on code generation with LLMs"
- Copilot returns relevant academic papers
OpenClaw
- Connect ToolRouter: openclaw mcp add toolrouter -- npx -y toolrouter-mcp
- Ask OpenClaw: "Search for papers on adversarial machine learning"
- OpenClaw returns initial results
Related Use Cases
Find Research Citations
Retrieve the full citation list and reference graph for any academic paper.
Discover Recent Studies
Find the latest published research in any field to stay current with new findings and developments.
Find Open Access Papers
Locate freely available versions of academic papers that can be read without a journal subscription.