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academic-research

Research
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A tool for rigorous academic research using Semantic Scholar and ArXiv. Focuses on finding highly-cited papers, retrieving abstracts, and following citation trails to understand the provenance of ideas.

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How to use this skill

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I want to install this Agent Skill for this project in Codex.

Source SKILL.md: https://github.com/majiayu000/claude-skill-registry/blob/HEAD/skills/analysis/academic-research-joshuaroll-research-skills-3/SKILL.md

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Copying this prompt does not install or run the skill. Review third-party files before use. Codex skill guide

Academic Research Skill

This skill allows you to function as an academic researcher, finding and analyzing scholarly papers with a focus on impact and provenance.

Capabilities

  1. Search Papers: Find papers by keyword, ensuring relevance.
  2. Analyze Impact: Filter by citation count to identify seminal works.
  3. Trace Provenance: (Optional) Find papers that cite a target paper to seeing how the field evolved.
  4. Get Details: Retrieve abstracts and direct PDF links.

Usage

Run the python script search_papers.py to perform searches.

Arguments

  • query (required): The search term.
  • --limit (optional): Max results (default 5).
  • --year (optional): Year range (e.g., "2023-2025").
  • --sort (optional): Sort by "relevance" or "citationCount" (default "relevance").
  • --open-access (optional): Only return open access papers.

Example

# Find top 5 seminal papers on "Large Language Models"
python3 search_papers.py "Large Language Models" --sort citationCount --limit 5

# Find recent research on "RAG" from 2024
python3 search_papers.py "Retrieval Augmented Generation" --year 2024-2025

Output Format

The script outputs a JSON object (or JSON-lines) containing:

  • title
  • authors
  • year
  • abstract (truncated if too long)
  • citationCount
  • url
  • pdf_url (if available)

Tips for the Agent

  • Be Skeptical: High citation count doesn't always mean "correct," but it means "influential."
  • Check Recency: For fast-moving fields (AI), prioritize year > citations.
  • Contextualize: When summarizing, mention who wrote it (e.g., "DeepMind," "Stanford") and when.