Agent Skills: Academic Papers Search

Academic Papers Search

When To Use

• Finding academic papers, citations, or formal research
• Building literature reviews or citation chains

When NOT To Use

• Community opinions (use /tome:discourse)
• Code implementations (use /tome:code-search)

Search arXiv, Semantic Scholar, and open-access sources.

Sources (Priority Order)

1. arXiv API (free, unlimited metadata)
2. Semantic Scholar API (100 req/5min, citation graphs)
3. Unpaywall (legal free version discovery)
4. CORE.ac.uk (open-access aggregator)
5. PubMed Central (biomedical)
6. Author preprint pages (WebSearch fallback)

PDF Processing

After acquiring a paper URL or local file path, convert the PDF to markdown for better extraction quality.

Conversion (prefer markitdown)

Apply the leyline:document-conversion protocol:

1. Try markitdown first: call the MCP convert_to_markdown tool with the PDF URL or file:// path. This produces structured markdown preserving tables, equations, figures, and section hierarchy.

2. Fall back to Read tool if markitdown is unavailable:

   • Read with pages: "1-20" for the first chunk
   • Continue with pages: "21-40" for longer papers
   • Continue in 20-page increments as needed
   • Note: tables and figures will not extract as cleanly

Extraction Targets

From the converted markdown, extract:

• Abstract and key findings
• Methodology and experimental setup
• Results tables and figures
• Citation information (authors, year, venue)
• Key equations or formal definitions

Fallback Guidance

When a paper is paywalled and no open version exists:

• Public library JSTOR/ProQuest access via library card
• DeepDyve article rental
• Inter-library loan request
• Direct author email template