Pro feature. Autofetch is a background service that scans Semantic Scholar for new publications under your linked author ID and the open web for press coverage of your name. Anything it finds is queued in your Autofetch tab as a pending update — nothing publishes until you approve it.
Where to find pending items
Open the Autofetch tab in the iOS app (or Updates in the web dashboard). You'll see a list of every pending item with type and source badges, the most important details (title and authors for publications; title and outlet for press), and two buttons: Approve and Dismiss.
Approve vs. dismiss
- Approve — moves the item from the queue into your real publications or press-mentions list. It's now part of your published site.
- Dismiss — discards the item. We won't surface it again, even if Semantic Scholar continues to associate it with you. Use this for false-positive matches or papers you don't want listed (e.g. a thesis chapter that's now superseded).
Both actions are immediate — there's no undo. If you accidentally approve something, you can delete it from the regular publications/press list. If you accidentally dismiss something, you can re-add it manually.
Triggering a scan manually
Tap the refresh icon in the top-right of the Autofetch tab. We'll re-query Semantic Scholar and the news scanner immediately. Otherwise, scans run automatically based on your Auto-update interval setting (default: every 7 days).
Settings
At the top of the Autofetch tab, two toggles:
- Auto-update publications — turns the periodic scan on or off. Citation count refreshes happen regardless of this toggle, since they're non-disruptive.
- Notify on new publications — sends you a push notification when new items arrive in the queue (requires push permission).
Linking a Semantic Scholar author ID
Autofetch needs to know which Semantic Scholar author you are. If you skipped this during onboarding, set it under Profile → Edit profile → Semantic Scholar ID. You can find your ID by searching for yourself on semanticscholar.org — it's the numeric portion of your author URL.
Why nothing's showing up
Three common reasons:
- You haven't linked a Semantic Scholar ID yet.
- Semantic Scholar hasn't indexed any new publications since your last scan.
- You dismissed everything that was in the queue. Use Show dismissed in the filter to confirm.