Semantic Scholar
A free AI-powered search engine for millions of academic papers, with quick one-line summaries.
What is Semantic Scholar?
Semantic Scholar is a free academic search engine from the Allen Institute for AI, a non-profit. It searches millions of research papers and gives short AI summaries so you can quickly decide which ones to read.
Think of it as a library catalogue that reads the abstract for you.
What you can do with it
- Search papers: across science, medicine, education and more
- TLDR summaries: one-line summaries of papers
- Find influential work: see the most important citations
- Save to library: organise papers into folders
- Research feeds: get recommendations based on what you save
Get started in 3 steps
- Go to semanticscholar.org, no sign-up needed to search
- Type your topic and read the TLDR summaries
- Sign up free to save papers and get recommendations
Try this today
- Search "gamification in education" and read the TLDRs
- Open a paper and check its most influential citations
- Create a library folder for a project
Good to know
- Completely free: run by a non-profit
- Not all papers are open: some full texts need access through publishers
- Great starting point: use with other tools for deeper reading
Quick challenge
Find the most-cited paper on a topic you love!
Picked by the Scrollwell team · updated 25 Oct 2026. Semantic Scholar is run by its own company — read its privacy terms before you add learners' names or marks.