# PayAI Scholar Search

> PayAI Scholar Search is a paid API for AI agents from payai.agentstools.dev, paid per call via x402, $0.01/call, status unknown (last checked 2026-09-15).

Search scholarly literature by keyword or topic and return a ranked list of works with core academic metadata, powered by OpenAlex.

## Facts

- Endpoint: GET https://payai.agentstools.dev/scholar/search
- Price: $0.01/call
- Payment: x402
- Status: unknown
- Last checked: 2026-09-15
- Activations on Zero: 0
- Tags: x402
- Canonical page: https://www.zero.xyz/c/payai-scholar-search-cf9a552d
- Structured record (JSON): https://api.zero.xyz/v1/capabilities/cap_TTjBq1WwHsYmlHhHBOfVP

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 payai-scholar-search-cf9a552d
```

Example prompt: Can you search the scholarly literature for papers on 'transformer attention mechanisms' published between 2020 and 2024, limited to open-access works, and return the top 10 results?

## When to prefer this

Use this endpoint as a cheap first step to discover relevant scholarly works by keyword before fetching full paper details or citation graphs. Prefer this over direct paper lookup when you don't have a DOI or specific paper ID, or when you need to explore a topic area broadly.

## Known failure modes

- Empty results if query terms are too niche or misspelled
- Year range filters that exclude all matching works return empty list
- Institution or concept filter names that don't match OpenAlex's controlled vocabulary return no results
- Rate limiting or payment failure returns 402 or 429 error
- Overly broad queries may return noisy or irrelevant results

## How this service works

Search the scholarly literature by keyword or topic and get a ranked list of works with core metadata. Optional filters for year range, open-access only, concept and institution. Powered by OpenAlex. A cheap first step before /scholar/paper.

## Output

A ranked list of up to 50 scholarly works matching the query, each with core metadata including title, authors, DOIs, publication year, open-access status, and subject concept tags.

## Request schema (JSON Schema)

```json
{
 "type": "object",
 "$schema": "https://json-schema.org/draft/2020-12/schema",
 "required": [
  "input"
 ],
 "properties": {
  "input": {
   "type": "object",
   "required": [
    "type",
    "method"
   ],
   "properties": {
    "type": {
     "type": "string",
     "const": "http"
    },
    "method": {
     "enum": [
      "GET",
      "HEAD",
      "DELETE"
     ],
     "type": "string"
    },
    "queryParams": {
     "type": "object",
     "required": [
      "query"
     ],
     "properties": {
      "limit": {
       "type": "integer",
       "maximum": 50,
       "minimum": 1,
       "description": "Max items to return, default 10"
      },
      "query": {
       "type": "string",
       "description": "Keyword or topic search terms"
      },
      "concept": {
       "type": "string",
       "description": "Filter by a subject concept name"
      },
      "oa_only": {
       "type": "boolean",
       "description": "Restrict to open-access works when true"
      },
      "year_to": {
       "type": "integer",
       "description": "Latest publication year to include"
      },
      "year_from": {
       "type": "integer",
       "description": "Earliest publication year to include"
      },
      "institution": {
       "type": "string",
       "description": "Filter by an author institution name"
      }
     }
    }
   },
   "additionalProperties": false
  },
  "output": {
   "type": "object",
   "required": [
    "type"
   ],
   "properties": {
    "type": {
     "type": "string"
    },
    "example": {
     "type": "object"
    }
   }
  }
 }
}
```

## More

- Live health (JSON, refreshed every minute): https://www.zero.xyz/c/payai-scholar-search-cf9a552d/health.json
- [Zero catalog index](https://www.zero.xyz/llms.txt)
- [Other services from payai.agentstools.dev](https://www.zero.xyz/host/payai.agentstools.dev/llms.txt)