Quickstart

1. Sign in

2. Get your account key

Open Account API keys. Reuse an existing active key, or create one there. Store its secret privately as CE_API_KEY in your environment. The same key serves all three APIs; no separate Files or MCP key is needed.

Send Authorization: Bearer $CE_API_KEY. Keep the key out of URLs, public source code, and client-side application bundles. Browser sign-in alone does not authenticate MCP.

3. Choose a use case

Scholar Metadata API: enable Metadata for paper and researcher discovery.
CEDOA Files API: enable Files for fulltext, XML, stored PDFs, and downloadable PDF links.
Research MCP: enable Research for AI tools. Also enable Metadata or Files when those tools use Scholar or CEDOA.

4. Make a first request

The examples use the public host https://scholar.citedevidence.com. Choose the request for your enabled use case.

GET/v1/oa/works?search=climate&per_page=5

Metadata: returns a results array and a meta pagination block.

curl -sS -H "Authorization: Bearer $CE_API_KEY" \
  "https://scholar.citedevidence.com/v1/oa/works?search=climate&per_page=5"

GET/v1/research-corpus/list?limit=5&has_fulltext=true
Files: returns content-backed works. Choose a returned ID and inspect its manifest before requesting a format.
```
curl -sS -H "Authorization: Bearer $CE_API_KEY" \
  "https://scholar.citedevidence.com/v1/research-corpus/list?limit=5&has_fulltext=true"
```

GET/api/v1/research/tools

Research: returns the tool catalogue and each tool's input schema.

curl -sS -H "Authorization: Bearer $CE_API_KEY" \
  "https://scholar.citedevidence.com/api/v1/research/tools"

5. Run a research tool

For the JSON interface, send the tool arguments directly in the body. This CEDOA search needs both Research and Files enabled.

curl -sS -H "Authorization: Bearer $CE_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  --data '{"query":"climate","source":"cedoa","num_results":5,"brief":false}' \
  "https://scholar.citedevidence.com/api/v1/research/tools/search_papers"

Inspect isError even when the HTTP status is 200. For an AI client, continue with MCP setup. To inspect requests in your browser, open the Playground.

Access errors

401 means the key is missing, invalid, revoked, or the account is inactive. 403 means the required use case is disabled. For 429, respect Retry-After and check your use-case quota in Account API keys. A 503 can indicate a temporarily unavailable service.