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