academic-research

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" })