Research Paper Data

Research Paper Data

Overview

Use this skill to search scholarly metadata, resolve persistent identifiers, and find legal open-access full text using providers that are visible in the current runtime. Prefer capability discovery and provenance over assuming a specific service, credential, or edition.

When OPENCODE_CONFIG_DIR is set, first look for $OPENCODE_CONFIG_DIR/research-capabilities.json. Treat that file as the edition's provider declaration. If it is missing, continue with public defaults listed below.

Read references/public-apis.md when making direct API requests or debugging a source-specific response. Use scripts/academic_search.py for broad topic, author, affiliation, ORCID, or OpenAlex/Crossref discovery when Python is available.

Provider Policy

Provider declarations use:

• public: no user secret required.
• user-configured: requires a visible user-provided setting, usually an environment variable.
• managed: an edition-provided provider; use only when its declared base URL and auth requirements are visible in the current runtime.

Default public sources:

• Crossref for article, book, proceedings, and reference metadata.
• arXiv for preprints and arXiv PDFs.
• Europe PMC for PMID, PMCID, biomedical metadata, and OA links.
• DataCite for dataset, software, preprint, and non-article DOI metadata.
• OpenAlex discovery through scripts/academic_search.py for broad topic, author, affiliation, ORCID, and citation-aware search. Treat OpenAlex results as discovery candidates; resolve selected DOI/arXiv/PMID records through an authoritative source before claiming final metadata or OA availability.

Optional user-configured sources:

• Use Unpaywall only when UNPAYWALL_EMAIL is visible.
• For polite OpenAlex/Crossref pool access, pass --mailto to scripts/academic_search.py or use OPENALEX_MAILTO, CROSSREF_MAILTO, or RESEARCH_CONTACT_EMAIL when visible.
• Use enhanced citation, graph, or full-text providers only when declared in research-capabilities.json and their required configuration is visible.

Use legal open-access/source-discovery paths only. Do not use paywall bypass, credential sharing, scraped account credentials, or undeclared hidden secrets.

Workflow

1. Discover providers.
   • Read research-capabilities.json when present.
   • Check required environment variables or local configuration before using a user-configured or managed provider.
   • If a declared provider is unavailable, skip it and say why when it affects coverage.
2. Classify the request.
   • Natural-language topic search: run scripts/academic_search.py first for ranked discovery when Python is available; then resolve selected identifiers through Crossref, arXiv, Europe PMC, or DataCite.
   • Author search or disambiguation: use --author, --affiliation, --orcid, --author-id, or --list-authors; report ambiguity instead of guessing.
   • DOI: normalize and query Crossref; if the item looks like a dataset, software, preprint, or Crossref fails, fall back to DataCite.
   • arXiv ID: query arXiv and construct canonical abstract and PDF URLs.
   • PMID or PMCID: query Europe PMC.
   • Citation/reference graph: use declared reference-capable providers and source-specific reference fields; do not present citation relationships as exhaustive unless a source proves them.
3. Find legal full text.
   • Prefer arXiv PDFs for arXiv records.
   • Prefer Europe PMC OA links for PMCID/biomedical records.
   • Use Unpaywall only when configured.
   • Otherwise report legal OA links found in source metadata, or state that no legal open full text was found.
4. Return compact, auditable results.
   • Include title, authors, year, venue/container, identifier, source name, source URL, OA URL/PDF URL when found, and confidence notes.
   • Mark ambiguous matches and do not collapse multiple plausible papers into one answer.
   • Cite provider provenance and source failures when they affect trust, coverage, or next steps.

Query Hygiene

• Use conservative result limits first, usually 5 to 10 records.
• Prefer python scripts/academic_search.py "<query>" --limit 5 --compact for broad discovery smoke tests and quick triage. Use JSON output for downstream parsing.
• URL-encode user queries and identifiers.
• Respect rate limits and retry-after headers.
• Prefer HTTPS JSON APIs. For arXiv, parse Atom/XML carefully and preserve the id, published, updated, authors, categories, and PDF link.
• For DOI comparisons, normalize by removing URL prefixes and lowercasing the DOI string.

Response Shape

For searches, provide:

• Best matches: short ranked list with title, year, authors, venue, DOI or other identifier, and source.
• Full text: legal PDF/full-text candidates or a clear not-found statement.
• Coverage notes: skipped optional sources, ambiguity, rate limits, or source failures.
• Next step: one focused recommendation, such as resolving one DOI, searching arXiv variants, or downloading an OA PDF with user approval.

For identifier resolution, provide one record when confident, or a small candidate set when not confident. Never fabricate abstracts, citations, PDFs, or author names when the source does not provide them.