SemanticScholarBot

What is SemanticScholarBot?

SemanticScholarBot is a specialized web crawler operated by the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence (AI2), designed to index academic and scientific literature for the Semantic Scholar search engine. First deployed around 2015, this crawler systematically navigates the web to identify, extract, and archive scholarly content, particularly focusing on academic PDFs and research publications.

The bot functions by scanning academic websites, institutional repositories, and open-access journals to collect structured metadata and full-text content from scholarly publications. Using advanced techniques like optical character recognition (OCR) and natural language processing (NLP), it extracts critical information including citations, figures, methodological details, and reference lists.

SemanticScholarBot identifies itself in server logs with the user agent string Mozilla/5.0 (compatible) SemanticScholarBot (+https://www.semanticscholar.org/crawler), which includes a link to its documentation. Earlier versions used SemanticScholarBot/1.0 (+http://s2.allenai.org/bot.html). It operates from Amazon AWS IP addresses, primarily from US-based servers, and maintains transparency about its identity and purpose, which distinguishes it from many other web crawlers.

Why is SemanticScholarBot crawling my site?

If you notice SemanticScholarBot on your website, it's likely because your site hosts or links to academic content that could be valuable to researchers. The bot specifically targets scholarly materials such as research papers, academic PDFs, conference proceedings, and scientific publications.

The crawler prioritizes academic domains, university websites, research institutions, and open-access repositories. It's particularly interested in recent publications and highly cited works. The frequency of visits depends on the volume and frequency of new academic content published on your site – sites that regularly publish research may see more frequent crawling activity.

SemanticScholarBot's crawling is generally considered authorized and legitimate as it serves an educational and research purpose. The bot is part of a non-profit initiative to make scientific knowledge more accessible to researchers worldwide.

What is the purpose of SemanticScholarBot?

SemanticScholarBot collects data to power Semantic Scholar, an AI-enhanced academic search engine that helps researchers discover relevant scientific literature more efficiently. The service addresses the challenge of information overload in scientific research by indexing millions of academic papers and making them searchable through advanced AI capabilities.

The data collected enables features like semantic search (understanding query intent beyond simple keyword matching), citation analysis, trend identification in research topics, and automated paper summarization. This information helps researchers discover connections between papers, identify emerging research areas, and navigate the expanding universe of scientific literature more effectively.

For website owners hosting academic content, having your publications indexed by SemanticScholarBot can increase visibility within the academic community, potentially leading to more citations and broader impact of research work. The service contributes to the open science movement by making research more discoverable, though some publishers may have concerns about copyright when full-text indexing occurs without explicit agreements.

How do I block SemanticScholarBot?

SemanticScholarBot respects the standard robots.txt protocol, making it straightforward to control its access to your website. To completely block this crawler from your entire site, add the following to your robots.txt file:

User-agent: SemanticScholarBot
Disallow: /

If you only want to block access to specific directories while allowing the bot to index other parts of your site (which may be preferable for academic institutions), you can use a more selective approach:

User-agent: SemanticScholarBot
Disallow: /private/
Allow: /publications/
Crawl-delay: 10

This configuration blocks access to the "/private/" directory while explicitly allowing the bot to index the "/publications/" directory. The "Crawl-delay" directive requests that the bot wait 10 seconds between requests, which can help reduce server load.

Before blocking SemanticScholarBot completely, consider that doing so may reduce the visibility of academic content in Semantic Scholar's search results, potentially limiting the reach and impact of research hosted on your site. For academic institutions and research organizations, allowing controlled access often provides benefits to both content creators and the wider research community.