Citation Network MCP

Citation-network analysis for Claude and other AI assistants, on Scopus or OpenAlex.

Search the literature, trace who cites whom across generations, map research fronts and intellectual bases, and pull the counts, metrics and bibliography you need, from a conversation. It is an MCP server, so any MCP client can use it: Claude Desktop, Claude Code, Cursor.

• 🕸️ Citation networks. Bibliographic coupling, co-citation, and multi-generation citation lineages with main-path analysis, exported as GraphML for VOSviewer or Gephi.
• 🔀 Two data sources. Scopus by default; add source="openalex" to run the same analyses without a Scopus subscription.
• 📊 Bibliometrics. Publications per year, journal SJR/SNIP/CiteScore, BibTeX for any list of papers.
• 🩺 Honest about access. One call tells you which tools your current Scopus access supports, and why the rest fail.
• ✅ Tested. 167 test functions, CI on Linux, macOS and Windows, and a live check of every tool against the real APIs.

How it compares with the other Scopus MCP servers: comparison.

Ask things like

Map the research front around these six papers on organizing visions.

Trace two generations of work citing Swanson & Ramiller (1997) and show me the main path.

How has publishing on "digital transformation" grown since 2010?

Get SJR and CiteScore for the Basket of Eight, and BibTeX for the papers we just found.

Tools

Parameters and details for each: tool reference.

Install

You need an API key from the Elsevier Developer Portal (register with your institutional email). OpenAlex needs no key.

Claude Desktop — one click:

1. Download citation-network-mcp-<version>.mcpb from the latest release.
2. Open it (or drag it into Settings → Extensions), click Install, and paste your API key when asked. Claude stores it securely.

Claude Code — two commands:

claude plugin marketplace add michalhron/citation-network-mcp
claude plugin install citation-network-mcp@michalhron

Then make your key available, either in your shell (export SCOPUS_API_KEY=...) or, better, in the OS secret store.

Any other MCP client (needs uv):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "citation-network": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": ["--from", "git+https://github.com/michalhron/citation-network-mcp.git", "citation-network-mcp"],
      "env": { "SCOPUS_API_KEY": "YOUR_KEY" }
    }
  }
}

Then ask your assistant to run diagnose_connection: it checks your key and tells you which tools your Scopus access supports.

Documentation

Origins

Formerly michalhron/scopus-mcp. This project began as a fork of qwe4559999/scopus-mcp by thinktraveller and qwe4559999, which provides Scopus search, abstracts, author profiles and citing papers. Everything since version 0.2 was developed here by Michal Hron. MIT licensed; see LICENSE.