Academic Research

This skill provides comprehensive guidance for academic paper search, literature reviews, and research synthesis using Exa MCP and arxiv-mcp-server.

When to Use This Skill

Searching for academic papers on a topic

Conducting literature reviews

Finding papers by specific authors

Discovering recent research in a field

Downloading and analyzing arXiv papers

Synthesizing findings across multiple papers

Tracking citation networks and influential papers

Researching state-of-the-art methods in AI/ML

Available Tools

Exa MCP Server (Web Search with Academic Filtering)

Tools

:

mcp__exa__web_search_exa

,

mcp__exa__get_code_context_exa

,

mcp__exa__deep_search_exa

Key Parameters for Academic Search

:

category: "research_paper"

- Filter results to academic papers

includeDomains: ["arxiv.org"]

- Restrict to arXiv

startPublishedDate

/

endPublishedDate

- Filter by publication date

ArXiv MCP Server (Paper Search, Download, Analysis)

Tools

:

search_papers

,

download_paper

,

list_papers

,

read_paper

Capabilities

:

Search arXiv by keyword, author, or category

Download papers locally (~/.arxiv-papers)

Read paper content directly

Deep paper analysis with built-in prompts

Core Workflows

Workflow 1: Quick Paper Discovery

Use case

Find papers on a specific topic quickly

Step 1: Use Exa with research_paper category

mcp__exa__web_search_exa({

query: "transformer attention mechanisms survey",

category: "research_paper",

numResults: 10

})

Step 2: Review titles and abstracts

Step 3: Note arXiv IDs for deeper analysis

Workflow 2: ArXiv-Focused Search

Use case

Search specifically within arXiv Step 1: Use arxiv MCP search_papers search_papers({ query: "large language models reasoning", max_results: 20, sort_by: "relevance" }) Step 2: Download papers download_paper({ arxiv_id: "2301.00234" }) Step 3: Read and analyze read_paper({ arxiv_id: "2301.00234" }) Workflow 3: Comprehensive Literature Review Step 1: Broad discovery with Exa (category: "research_paper") Step 2: Identify key papers and authors Step 3: Deep dive with arXiv MCP (download + read_paper) Step 4: Synthesize findings by methodology/approach Workflow 4: Recent Developments Tracking Step 1: Time-filtered Exa search mcp__exa__web_search_exa({ query: "multimodal large language models", category: "research_paper", startPublishedDate: "2024-01-01" }) Step 2: Sort arXiv by submitted_date search_papers({ query: "multimodal LLM", sort_by: "submitted_date" }) ArXiv Categories Reference Category Description cs.AI Artificial Intelligence cs.CL Computation and Language (NLP) cs.CV Computer Vision cs.LG Machine Learning cs.NE Neural and Evolutionary Computing stat.ML Statistics - Machine Learning cs.RO Robotics Academic Domain Filtering For Exa searches, restrict to academic sources: includeDomains: [ "arxiv.org", "aclanthology.org", "openreview.net", "proceedings.mlr.press", "papers.nips.cc", "openaccess.thecvf.com" ] Tool Selection Guide Task Primary Tool Alternative Broad topic search Exa (research_paper) arXiv search_papers ArXiv-specific arXiv search_papers Exa with includeDomains Download paper arXiv download_paper - Full paper content arXiv read_paper - Code implementations Exa get_code_context - Very recent papers arXiv (submitted_date) Exa with date filter Best Practices Start broad with Exa's research_paper category, then narrow Use date filtering for recent developments Download key papers via arXiv MCP for persistent access Cross-reference multiple search approaches Use technical terms in queries for better results Reference Documentation For detailed parameters and advanced usage: references/exa-academic-search.md - Exa parameters for academic search references/arxiv-mcp-tools.md - ArXiv MCP server tool reference