Scholarly literature and bibliographic databases — OpenAlex, Crossref, Europe PMC, PubMed, DOAJ, DBLP, Semantic Scholar. Use this skill when: 1. Searching pe...
---
name: pilot-service-agents-academic
description: >
Scholarly literature and bibliographic databases — OpenAlex, Crossref, Europe PMC, PubMed, DOAJ, DBLP, Semantic Scholar.
Use this skill when:
1. Searching peer-reviewed works by author, title, keyword, or DOI
2. Walking the citation / funder / institution graph (OpenAlex)
3. Looking up a DBLP author page or a ROR organisation record
Do NOT use this skill when:
- Full-text article download — agents return metadata only
- Clinical guideline search (use pilot-service-agents-health — clinicaltrials, PubMed eSearch is in `academic`)
- Book catalog search (use pilot-service-agents-books)
tags:
- pilot-protocol
- service-agents
- academic
- scholarly
license: AGPL-3.0
compatibility: >
Requires pilot-protocol skill, pilotctl binary on PATH, a running daemon
joined to network 9 (data-exchange), and the `list-agents` directory agent
reachable on the overlay.
metadata:
author: vulture-labs
version: "1.0"
openclaw:
requires:
bins:
- pilotctl
homepage: https://pilotprotocol.network
allowed-tools:
- Bash
---
# pilot-service-agents-academic
Scholarly literature and bibliographic databases — OpenAlex, Crossref, Europe PMC, PubMed, DOAJ, DBLP, Semantic Scholar.
All agents in this category follow the standard contract described in
`pilot-service-agents`. Send `/help` to any agent to read its exact filter
schema — the table below is a snapshot; the catalogue grows, so always verify
with a fresh `list-agents` query.
## Agents in this category (snapshot)
| Hostname | Description |
|---|---|
| `crossref-funders` | Crossref Funders |
| `crossref-works` | Crossref works search |
| `dblp-author-search` | Dblp Author Search |
| `dblp-publ-search` | Dblp Publ Search |
| `doaj-articles` | Open access article search |
| `europepmc-search` | Europe PMC search |
| `ncbi-esearch` | PubMed search (eutils) |
| `openalex-authors` | OpenAlex author search |
| `openalex-concepts` | Openalex Concepts |
| `openalex-funders` | Openalex Funders |
| `openalex-institutions` | Openalex Institutions |
| `openalex-publishers` | Openalex Publishers |
| `openalex-venues` | Openalex Venues |
| `openalex-works` | OpenAlex works search |
| `ror-org-search` | Ror Org Search |
| `wikidata-universities` | Wikidata Universities |
## What you can expect
- Deep OpenAlex coverage — works, authors, institutions, venues, concepts, funders, publishers
- Crossref (works + funders) and DOAJ (open-access articles)
- ROR for research organisation identifiers
## What NOT to expect
- Full-text PDFs — rights-restricted upstream
- Private or institutional pre-prints (use arXiv directly for pre-print search — not yet in catalogue)
## Commands (same pattern for every agent in the category)
```bash
# Read an agent's filter contract
pilotctl --json send-message <hostname> --data "/help"
pilotctl --json inbox
# Fetch structured data
pilotctl --json send-message <hostname> --data '/data {json filters}'
pilotctl --json inbox
# Natural-language summary (Gemini)
pilotctl --json send-message <hostname> --data '/summary {json filters}'
pilotctl --json inbox
```
## Response shape
`send-message` returns an ACK envelope immediately (`{"ack":"ACK TEXT N bytes", "bytes":N, "target":"<address>", "type":"text"}`). The **actual agent response** arrives a few seconds later and is read with `pilotctl --json inbox`. Each inbox entry carries the agent's normalised envelope in its `data` field:
```json
{
"source": "<hostname>",
"items": [...],
"count": <int>,
"total": <int|null>,
"page": <int|null>,
"next": <cursor|null>,
"truncated": <bool>,
"upstream_url": "<resolved upstream URL>"
}
```
`/help` returns plain text. `/summary` returns a Gemini-generated prose string. Free-text queries also return Gemini prose.
## Workflow Example
```bash
# 1. Fresh discovery — the catalogue grows, never hard-code
pilotctl --json send-message list-agents --data '/data {"category":"academic","limit":20}'
pilotctl --json inbox
# 2. Read the contract of a specific agent
pilotctl --json send-message openalex-works --data '/help'
pilotctl --json inbox
# 3. Query it
pilotctl --json send-message openalex-works --data '/data {"search":"carbon capture","per_page":3}'
pilotctl --json inbox
```
## Dependencies
Requires the `pilot-protocol` core skill, the `pilot-service-agents` skill
(for the general discovery flow), `pilotctl` on PATH, and a running daemon
joined to network 9.
don't have the plugin yet? install it then click "run inline in claude" again.