search_literature
ActiveTool of Scite
Search scientific literature and read full-text content from peer-reviewed papers. Use `dois` (preferred) or `titles` with targeted `term` queries to extract full-text passages from specific papers. Each call returns up to 5 relevant excerpts (~500 chars each) — vary search terms across calls to read through a paper section by section. **IMPORTANT — keep `limit` small.** Use `limit: 10-50` with `offset` for pagination. Large limits with full citations and excerpts produce very large payloads that consume significant LLM context. **Calling with no parameters browses the corpus** (210M+ papers, relevance-sorted). This is allowed for broad exploration but rarely what you want — pass `term`, `dois`, `titles`, or other filters for targeted results. **What This Tool Returns:** - Paper metadata: title, authors (first 3), abstract, DOI, journal, year, volume, issue, page - `fulltextExcerpts`: up to 5 passages (~500 chars) from the paper matching your query (OA only) - `access`: resolved access link with source, type (open/institutional/purchase), content type, and pricing - `citations`: Smart Citation statements — actual quoted text from citing papers, classified as supporting/contrasting/mentioning/unclassified (unclassified = statement present but classifier hasn't assigned a type) - `tally`: citation metrics (total, supporting, contrasting, mentioning, citing publications) - `retraction_notices`: editorial notices including retractions, corrections, concerns - `isOa`, `oaStatus`, `license`: open access information **Fetching Paper Metadata (no search term needed):** Pass `dois` or `titles` WITHOUT a `term` to retrieve metadata for specific papers. Example: `dois: ["10.1038/s41586-020-2012-7"]` **Full-Text Excerpts:** For OA papers, `fulltextExcerpts` contains passages matching your query. If empty, the full text is not indexed or terms didn't match — use the `access` field for the best link to the PDF or full text. **Smart Citations ARE Full-Text Evidence:** - `snippet`: exact sentence/paragraph from the citing paper's full text - `type`: classification (supporting, contrasting, mentioning, unclassified) - `section`: paper section (Introduction, Methods, Results, Discussion) - `sourceDoi`: paper containing this snippet; `targetDoi`: paper being cited **Search Capabilities:** - Boolean operators: AND, OR, NOT - Phrase search: "exact phrase" - Proximity: "term1 term2"~5 - Field filters: title, abstract, author, journal, year, affiliation - Citation filters: supporting_from/to, contrasting_from/to, mentioning_from/to - Editorial filters: has_retraction, has_concern, has_correction, has_erratum **Parameters:** - `term`: cross-field search query (optional when `dois`/`titles` provided) - `dois`: array of DOIs to filter to specific papers - `titles`: array of titles to filter (use when DOIs unavailable) - `limit`: max results (default: 10, max: 1000) - `offset`: pagination offset - Plus 20+ filter parameters (see schema) **Response Format:** ```json { "hits": [{ "doi": "10.1234/example", "title": "Paper Title", "authors": [{"authorName": "Jane Smith"}], "abstract": "Full abstract text...", "year": 2023, "journal": "Nature", "tally": {"supporting": 32, "contrasting": 8, "mentioning": 5}, "fulltextExcerpts": ["Relevant passage..."], "access": {"url": "https://...", "accessType": "open", "contentType": "pdf"}, "citations": [{"snippet": "These findings...", "type": "supporting", "section": "Results"}], "retraction_notices": [] }] } ```
Parameters schema
{
"type": "object",
"required": [],
"properties": {
"dois": {
"type": "array",
"items": {
"type": "string"
},
"description": "Filter results to specific DOIs. Use WITHOUT `term` to fetch paper metadata (title, abstract, citations, access URL). Use WITH `term` to search within those papers for full-text excerpts. Prefer DOIs over titles as they are exact matches. Example: ['10.1038/s41586-020-2649-2']."
},
"term": {
"type": "string",
"description": "Cross-field search query. Optional when `dois` or `titles` is provided (omit to fetch metadata only). IMPORTANT: Use domain-specific technical terms, not broad phrases — the index covers all academic fields so ambiguous terms return irrelevant results. Supports Boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT), phrase search (\"exact phrase\"), proximity search (\"term1 term2\"~5). Searches across title, abstract, and full-text. Example: \"PAC learning\" AND \"generalization bounds\" AND \"neural networks\""
},
"year": {
"type": "integer",
"maximum": 2100,
"minimum": 1600,
"description": "Filter by specific publication year. Example: 2020. Cannot be combined with date_from/date_to."
},
"limit": {
"type": "integer",
"default": 10,
"maximum": 1000,
"minimum": 1,
"description": "Maximum number of results to return. Default: 10, Maximum: 1000. For better performance, use smaller limits (10-50) and pagination."
},
"title": {
"type": "string",
"description": "Filter by text in publication title. Example: 'climate change'"
},
"topic": {
"type": "string",
"description": "Filter by research topic/subject area. Example: 'Oncology' or 'Neuroscience'"
},
"author": {
"type": "string",
"description": "Filter by author name. Partial names work. Example: 'Einstein' or 'Albert Einstein'"
},
"offset": {
"type": "integer",
"default": 0,
"minimum": 0,
"description": "Pagination offset for result sets. Use with limit for pagination. Example: offset=20, limit=10 returns results 21-30."
},
"titles": {
"type": "array",
"items": {
"type": "string"
},
"description": "Filter results to papers matching these titles. Use WITHOUT `term` to fetch paper metadata, or WITH `term` to search within those papers. Use when DOIs are not available — prefer `dois` when possible. Example: ['Attention is all you need']."
},
"date_to": {
"type": "string",
"pattern": "^\\d{4}(-\\d{2}-\\d{2})?$",
"description": "Filter papers published up to this date. Format: YYYY-MM-DD or YYYY. Example: '2023-12-31' or '2023'"
},
"journal": {
"type": "string",
"description": "Filter by journal name. Example: 'Nature' or 'Science'"
},
"abstract": {
"type": "string",
"description": "Filter by text in publication abstract. Example: 'neural networks'"
},
"date_from": {
"type": "string",
"pattern": "^\\d{4}(-\\d{2}-\\d{2})?$",
"description": "Filter papers published from this date onwards. Format: YYYY-MM-DD or YYYY. Example: '2015-01-01' or '2015'"
},
"has_tally": {
"type": "boolean",
"description": "Filter papers with Smart Citations (tally > 0). true = papers that have been cited with context"
},
"publisher": {
"type": "string",
"description": "Filter by publisher name. Example: 'Elsevier' or 'Springer'"
},
"paper_type": {
"type": "string",
"description": "Filter by publication type. Examples: 'Article', 'Review', 'Clinical Trial', 'Meta-Analysis', 'Case Report'"
},
"affiliation": {
"type": "string",
"description": "Filter by author institutional affiliation. Example: 'Stanford University' or 'MIT'"
},
"has_concern": {
"type": "boolean",
"description": "Filter papers with editorial concerns. true = papers with concerns"
},
"has_erratum": {
"type": "boolean",
"description": "Filter papers with errata. true = papers with published errata"
},
"mentioning_to": {
"type": "integer",
"description": "Maximum number of mentioning Smart Citations"
},
"supporting_to": {
"type": "integer",
"description": "Maximum number of supporting Smart Citations. Example: 100 = papers with up to 100 supporting citations"
},
"contrasting_to": {
"type": "integer",
"description": "Maximum number of contrasting Smart Citations. Example: 20 = papers with up to 20 contrasting citations"
},
"has_correction": {
"type": "boolean",
"description": "Filter papers with corrections. true = papers with published corrections"
},
"has_retraction": {
"type": "boolean",
"description": "Filter papers with retraction notices. true = retracted papers only"
},
"collection_slug": {
"type": "string",
"description": "Restrict the search to the papers in one of the user's Collections (a saved, named set of papers). Pass the Collection slug from `create_collection` or `search_collections`. Combine with `term` and other filters to search within that Collection."
},
"mentioning_from": {
"type": "integer",
"description": "Minimum number of mentioning Smart Citations. Example: 50 = papers with at least 50 mentioning citations"
},
"supporting_from": {
"type": "integer",
"description": "Minimum number of supporting Smart Citations. Example: 10 = papers with at least 10 supporting citations"
},
"contrasting_from": {
"type": "integer",
"description": "Minimum number of contrasting Smart Citations. Example: 5 = papers with at least 5 contrasting citations"
},
"citing_publications_to": {
"type": "integer",
"description": "Maximum number of total citing publications (traditional citation count)"
},
"citing_publications_from": {
"type": "integer",
"description": "Minimum number of total citing publications (traditional citation count)"
}
}
}No endpoints wrapped at confidence ≥ 0.70.
Parent server
Scite
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