Scholar Scout

A tool to monitor Google Scholar alerts and classify research papers using Perplexity AI.

Features

• Connects to Gmail to fetch Google Scholar alert emails
• Uses Perplexity AI to parse and extract paper information
• Supports multiple research topics and keywords
• Sends notifications to Slack

Setup

1. Clone the repository
2. Create a virtual environment: python -m venv .venv
3. Activate the virtual environment: source .venv/bin/activate (Unix) or .venv\Scripts\activate (Windows)
4. Install dependencies: pip install -r requirements.txt
5. Copy .env.example to .env and fill in your credentials
6. Copy config.example.yml to config.yml and customize settings

Configuration

Create a .env file with:

[email protected]
GMAIL_APP_PASSWORD=your-app-specific-password
PPLX_API_KEY=your-perplexity-api-key
SLACK_API_TOKEN=your-slack-api-token

Adding Users to Track

1. Go to Google Scholar
2. Search for the researcher you want to track
3. Click on their profile
4. Click the "Follow" button (bell icon) to receive email alerts for new papers
5. In Gmail, create a filter to move these alerts to your designated Scholar folder
6. Update your config.yml to include any Slack users to notify:

research_topics:
  - name: "LLM Inference"
    description: "Papers about large language model inference, optimization, and deployment"
    keywords:
      - "language model inference"
      - "LLM serving"
      - "model optimization"
    slack_users:
      - "@user1"
      - "@user2"
    slack_channel: "#llm-papers"  # optional

HyScale Scholar Account

To add researchers to the HyScale Scholar tracking:

1. Email the admin ([email protected]) with:
   • Researcher's name and Google Scholar profile link
   • Your Slack username to receive notifications
   • Any specific keywords you want to track
2. The admin will:
   • Set up the Google Scholar alert
   • Update the configuration
   • Confirm once tracking is active

Usage

Run the main script:

python scholar_classifier.py

Testing

Integration Tests

To run the integration tests under the root directory:

python -m unittest tests/test_integration.py -v

The integration tests require a test_config.yml file in the tests/ directory with your Gmail credentials and settings. Example structure:

email:
  username: [email protected]
  password: your-app-specific-password  # Gmail App Password, not your regular password
  folder: "Inbox"      # IMAP folder where Scholar alerts are stored

Note:

• You'll need to create an App Password for Gmail
• The tests expect Google Scholar alert emails from January 5th, 2025 in the specified folder
• Make sure your Scholar alerts are being properly filtered to the specified folder, namely provide the correct path to the folder in the config.yml file

License

MIT

scholar-scout