# Academic Evidence Pack – Scholarly Evidence Finder

> Academic Evidence Pack – Scholarly Evidence Finder is a paid API for AI agents from aep-api.fly.dev, paid per call via x402, $0.03/call, status unknown (last checked 2026-09-13).

Finds 3–10 scholarly paper candidates for a research question or topic, returning DOI/OpenAlex IDs, authors, year, venue, open-access URLs, citation counts, and retraction/correction warnings.

## Facts

- Endpoint: POST https://aep-api.fly.dev/v1/evidence-pack
- Price: $0.03/call
- Payment: x402
- Status: unknown
- Last checked: 2026-09-13
- Activations on Zero: 0
- Tags: x402
- Canonical page: https://www.zero.xyz/c/academic-evidence-pack-scholarly-evidence-finder-a076bd6a
- Structured record (JSON): https://api.zero.xyz/v1/capabilities/cap_SB4E9X-vu1vBO-EFv7d2B

Status and success rate cover calls made through Zero and Zero's own probes. Third-party monitors may report differently.

## How to call it through Zero

Zero handles the 402 payment challenge and records the run. With the Zero CLI installed (`npm i -g @zeroxyz/cli`):

```sh
zero fetch --capability academic-evidence-pack-scholarly-evidence-finder-a076bd6a -d '<json body>'
```

Example prompt: Can you find me 5 recent scholarly papers from 2020 onwards on whether retrieval-augmented generation reduces hallucinations in large language models? Only include open-access papers and flag any that have been retracted.

## When to prefer this

Choose this endpoint when an AI agent needs to ground a claim, report, or document in real scholarly literature with traceable DOIs and integrity checks — especially when you need retraction warnings, open-access links, and citation context in a single call. Prefer it over generic web search when you specifically need peer-reviewed sources with structured bibliographic metadata. Not suitable for retrieving full paper text or verifying a specific reference (use the sibling bibliography-verification endpoint for that).

## Known failure modes

- Query too short or vague — minimum 8 characters required, returns 400 validation error
- No matching papers found for niche or highly specific query — returns empty papers array
- Provider (OpenAlex/CrossRef) timeout or partial failure — returned in partial_failures field with reduced result set
- Rate limiting or payment failure via x402 — returns 402 or 429 status
- Retraction data may be incomplete — integrity 'none_found' does not guarantee paper validity

## How this service works

Find 3-10 scholarly candidates for a question or topic. Returns DOI/OpenAlex IDs, authors, year, venue, source URLs, citation context, open-access location, and known retraction/correction warnings. JSON only. Does not claim that a paper proves a statement.

## Output

A JSON object containing a list of up to 10 scholarly paper candidates, each with identifiers (DOI, OpenAlex ID), title, authors, year, venue, relevance score and reason, open-access URL and license, citation count with context note, integrity status (retraction/correction warnings from OpenAlex and CrossRef), and source URLs. Also includes request metadata, stats (latency, cache status, duplicates removed), and disclaimer warnings that candidates are not proof of any claim.

## Request schema (JSON Schema)

```json
{
 "type": "object",
 "properties": {
  "limit": {
   "type": "integer",
   "default": 5,
   "maximum": 10,
   "minimum": 3
  },
  "query": {
   "type": "string",
   "maxLength": 500,
   "minLength": 8,
   "description": "Question, claim, or research topic."
  },
  "fields": {
   "type": "array",
   "items": {
    "enum": [
     "papers",
     "relevance",
     "impact_context",
     "access",
     "integrity",
     "provenance"
    ],
    "type": "string"
   },
   "description": "Optional response minimization."
  },
  "to_year": {
   "type": "integer"
  },
  "from_year": {
   "type": "integer"
  },
  "open_access_only": {
   "type": "boolean",
   "default": false
  },
  "exclude_known_retracted": {
   "type": "boolean",
   "default": false,
   "description": "Default keeps retracted records but marks them; true filters them."
  }
 }
}
```

## Response schema (JSON Schema)

```json
{
 "type": "json",
 "example": {
  "stats": {
   "cache": "miss",
   "latency_ms": 2140,
   "duplicates_removed": 1,
   "filtered_retracted": 0,
   "candidates_retrieved": 15
  },
  "papers": [
   {
    "type": "article",
    "year": 2024,
    "title": "…",
    "venue": "…",
    "access": {
     "is_oa": true,
     "source": "openalex",
     "license": "cc-by",
     "best_url": "https://…",
     "confidence": "reported",
     "retrieved_at": "…"
    },
    "authors": [
     {
      "name": "…",
      "orcid": null
     }
    ],
    "integrity": {
     "note": "No update records found on checked sources. This is not proof of validity.",
     "status": "none_found",
     "updates": [],
     "sources_checked": [
      "openalex",
      "crossref"
     ]
    },
    "relevance": {
     "rank": 1,
     "score": 0.87,
     "reason": "provider relevance; DOI; complete metadata; recent"
    },
    "provenance": {
     "title": {
      "source": "openalex",
      "retrieved_at": "…"
     }
    },
    "identifiers": {
     "doi": "10.xxxx/…",
     "openalex": "W…"
    },
    "source_urls": [
     "https://doi.org/10.xxxx/…",
     "https://openalex.org/W…"
    ],
    "impact_context": {
     "note": "Citation count is impact context from one provider, not a quality score.",
     "source": "openalex",
     "retrieved_at": "…",
     "citation_count": 42
    }
   }
  ],
  "request": {
   "id": "req_…",
   "filters": {
    "limit": 5,
    "to_year": null,
    "from_year": 2022,
    "open_access_only": false,
    "exclude_known_retracted": false
   },
   "price_usd": "0.03",
   "retrieved_at": "2026-09-01T12:00:00.000Z",
   "normalized_query": "retrieval-augmented generation reduce hallucinations"
  },
  "warnings": [
   "Candidate evidence only; relevance and citation count do not establish truth or quality. A missing integrity warning does not prove a paper is sound."
  ],
  "partial_failures": []
 }
}
```

## More

- Live health (JSON, refreshed every minute): https://www.zero.xyz/c/academic-evidence-pack-scholarly-evidence-finder-a076bd6a/health.json
- [Zero catalog index](https://www.zero.xyz/llms.txt)
- [Other services from aep-api.fly.dev](https://www.zero.xyz/host/aep-api.fly.dev/llms.txt)