Semantic Scholar
Ranked 3 of 3 academic search engines by recommenders
Free academic search with full-text search and citation graph browsing, recommended as a better all-round starting point than arXiv. Critics note it is slow and sometimes recommends loosely related papers.
5 people recommended Semantic Scholar in Hacker News comments, 2 had mixed feelings and 2 criticized it, November 2025 to October 2026.
Summary written by Claude from 10 comments. It was written before the November 2026 recount, and 8 of those comments still count.
9 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 5
- mixed feelings
- 2
- warn against or regret it
- 2
The record
Recommended in 5 of 12 months
In 5 different threads.
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: not recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 5 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, not met.
- 2.5 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 5 of 12 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
- Recommended in 5 threadsNeeds 5 or more, met.
- The biggest thread supplies 20% of its recommendersNeeds half or less, met.
The same rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. Mixed feelings count toward neither side. How the badge works
What people say about it
Reasons grouped from a sample of 8 of the 9 opinions about it, picked in proportion to how many people recommend it, have mixed feelings and criticize it. Each mark is one comment in the sample. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Best all-round academic search
“I'd say go on Semantic Scholar, Academia.edu, or some other academic search tool and start digging!”
Comment from 14 Aug 2026 in “Seven books I keep close because I love them” “Semantic Scholar is actually still the best in the game. But even that is extremely slow.”
Comment from 28 Jun 2026 in “Does Your Paper Really Suck?” “I recommend something like semanticscholar to find actual relevant papers”
Comment from 24 Sep 2026 in “ArXiv receives multiyear commitments to support it as an independent nonprofit” - Comment from 19 Dec 2025 in “Beginning January 2026, all ACM publications will be made open access”
Full-text search and citation graphs
“doing great work in this area, making it easy to see who cites who”
Comment from 22 Jan 2026 in “GPTZero finds 100 new hallucinations in NeurIPS 2025 accepted papers” Better than arXiv for finding papers
“I don't see much added value for most arXiv extensions, except for SemanticScholar”
Comment from 11 May 2026 in “Show HN: TikTok but for Scientific Papers”
Other academic search engines people recommend
The two most recommended other academic search engines, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Mixed | Criticize | Approval | Months | Had for | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Google Scholar | 12 | 5 | 12 | 50% | 6 | — | — |
| PubMed | 7 | 1 | 1 | 88% | 5 | — | — |
| Semantic ScholarThis page | 5 | 2 | 2 | 71% | 5 | — | — |
What people said
8 of the 9 opinions about it, picked in proportion to the three counts, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“I recommend something like semanticscholar to find actual relevant papers”
“I'd say go on Semantic Scholar, Academia.edu, or some other academic search tool and start digging!”
“Semantic Scholar is actually still the best in the game. But even that is extremely slow.”
“Semantic Scholar tends to recommend things that are in the same general area but not specific enough.”
“I don't see much added value for most arXiv extensions, except for SemanticScholar”
“doing great work in this area, making it easy to see who cites who”
“Profiles just don't work for authors with accented characters in the name”
“semanticscholar is a better one stop shop than arxiv”
Counts come from 1,791,911 Hacker News comments labeled by Claude, November 2025 to October 2026, with data through October 31, 2026. Counts updated 2 Nov 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.