Open Scholar Skills vs Semantic Scholar MCP Server
Open Scholar Skills is a plugin bundle for AI coding tools published by ZhangYGroup (Yongjun Zhang). Marketplaces we read that list it: 1 (Community GitHub marketplaces). Semantic Scholar MCP Server is an MCP server published by smaniches. Marketplaces we read that list it: 2 (Official MCP Registry, PyPI (MCP servers)). As of our marketplace pass on 2026-10-29. This pair was picked by a reader, not by our comparison rule, so search engines are asked not to index the page.
Where each is published
| Marketplace |  Semantic Scholar MCP Server | |
|---|---|---|
| Community marketplace joshzyj/open-scholar-skill | Listed Version: 5.22.2 Forks (GitHub): 25 Stars (GitHub): 180 Not marked · First seen |
Not listed |
| Official MCP Registry | Not listed | Listed Version: 1.7.12 Downloads/month (PyPI): 2 126 Downloads/week (PyPI): 2 404 Forks (GitHub): 2 Stars (GitHub): 23 Not marked · First seen |
| PyPI (MCP servers) | Not listed | Listed Version: 1.7.12 Downloads/month (PyPI): 2 126 Downloads/week (PyPI): 2 404 Forks (GitHub): 2 Stars (GitHub): 23 Not marked · First seen |
Each figure is the marketplace's own and is never added up across marketplaces. A marketplace that publishes no figure shows none: no number is not zero.
The facts side by side
| Fact | Open Scholar Skills | Semantic Scholar MCP Server |
|---|---|---|
| Marketplaces that list it (differs) | 1 (worse) | 2 (better) |
| Stars (GitHub) (differs) | 180 (better) | 23 (worse) |
| Forks (GitHub) (differs) | 25 (better) | 2 (worse) |
| Last release (differs) | Not published | 2026-10-27 |
| Where it runs (differs) | Installs as a plugin bundle | On your machine (s2-mcp-server) |
| Transport (differs) | Not stated | stdio |
| Tools it declares | Not published | Not published |
| Environment variables it asks for (differs) | Not published | 2, secrets among them: 1 |
| Licence (differs) | Not stated | MIT |
| Repository (differs) | github.com/joshzyj/open-scholar-skill | github.com/smaniches/semantic-scholar-mcp |
| Changes in the last 7 days (differs) | 2 | 4 |
| First seen (differs) | 2026-10-24 | 2026-10-11 |
Lines where the two differ have a tinted background and bold values. Where the data itself says which value is better (more marketplaces, a larger figure of the same marketplace, a fresher release, a verified mark on a marketplace that lists both), the better one is also marked green with ▲ and the worse one red with ▼. Where it runs, the transport, the tools, the settings, hooks, the bundle's parts, the licence and the week's changes are marked only as different: more or fewer is not better in itself.
What each says it does
Open Scholar Skills
The full social-science research pipeline as skills: idea formalization, systematic literature review, theory and hypotheses, research design with power analysis, causal identification, EDA, analysis with publication-quality tables and figures, computational social science, LLM annotation, section-by-section drafting, citation verification, journal formatting, ethics, replication packages, and simulated peer review. Ships specialized reviewer, code-review, and verification subagents, plus a PreToolUse data-safety guard.
Semantic Scholar MCP Server
MCP server for the Semantic Scholar API: search 200M+ papers, citations, authors, recommendations.
How to run each
Open Scholar Skills As a Claude Code plugin
/plugin marketplace add joshzyj/open-scholar-skill
/plugin install open-scholar-skill@open-scholarSemantic Scholar MCP Server As a local MCP server: PyPI package
claude mcp add --env "SEMANTIC_SCHOLAR_API_KEY=<YOUR_SEMANTIC_SCHOLAR_API_KEY>" --transport stdio semantic-scholar-mcp -- uvx s2-mcp-serverRequires: SEMANTIC_SCHOLAR_API_KEY (secret)
Commands built only from what the marketplaces declare; the full set for every client is on each card.
Tools each declares
Neither one's marketplaces publish a list of tools, so there is nothing to compare.
Settings each asks for
The marketplaces of Open Scholar Skills publish no settings it asks for, so we do not compare settings.
What it can do: Open Scholar Skills · What it can do: Semantic Scholar MCP Server · Compare two other plugins
Data comes from public marketplace files in GitHub repositories of their authors. Data comes from the Official MCP Registry (registry.modelcontextprotocol.io), CC0 1.0. Package data comes from the Python Package Index (pypi.org). Figures come from our own regular passes over the marketplaces, last read on . We publish no contact details for plugin publishers.