Academic Research#

Search 250M+ academic works via OpenAlex. No API key required.

Built by Topanga — AI Research Consultant

Quick Start#

Search papers by topic#

bash

python3 scripts/scholar-search.py search "transformer architectures" --limit 10

Search by author#

bash

python3 scripts/scholar-search.py author "Yann LeCun" --limit 5

Look up by DOI#

bash

python3 scripts/scholar-search.py doi "10.1038/s41586-021-03819-2"

Get citation chain (papers that cite a work)#

bash

python3 scripts/scholar-search.py citations "10.1038/s41586-021-03819-2" --direction both

Deep read (fetch abstract + full text when available)#

bash

python3 scripts/scholar-search.py deep "10.1038/s41586-021-03819-2"

JSON output for programmatic use#

bash

python3 scripts/scholar-search.py search "CRISPR" --json

Literature Review Workflow#

Automated multi-step literature review:

bash

python3 scripts/literature-review.py "algorithmic literacy in education" --papers 30 --output review.md

This will:

1. Search for papers across multiple query variations
2. Deduplicate and rank by relevance + citations
3. Identify thematic clusters
4. Generate a structured synthesis in markdown

Options:

• --papers N — Target number of papers (default: 20)
• --output FILE — Write review to file (default: stdout)
• --years 2020-2025 — Restrict publication year range
• --json — Output structured JSON instead of markdown

Output Format#

All search commands return structured data per paper:

• Title and publication year
• Authors (up to 5)
• Abstract (when available)
• Citation count
• DOI
• Open access URL (when available)
• Source journal/venue

Tips#

• OpenAlex sorts by relevance by default; use --sort citations for most-cited
• Combine search + deep for quick triage: search first, deep-read promising hits
• The literature review script caches results in /tmp/litreview_cache/ to avoid re-fetching
• For full-text PDFs, pipe DOIs to your PDF extraction tool