📜 What is Paper-Research-MCP?

A brand-new MCP server for academic paper search: 31 sources behind 36 tools with one standardized result schema — multi-source discovery, conference peer reviews, paper↔code mapping, DOI/OA resolution, and a federation layer on top that searches many sources at once, deduplicates, and tracks provenance.

• 🔓 Free-first — everything works without an API key; premium connectors wake up only if you set their env vars
• 🧵 Federated — search_papers fans one or many keywords out to every source in parallel, dedups by DOI → title, tags alsoIn (sources) and matchedQueries (keywords) per result
• 📅 Date-bounded — year_from/year_to enforced natively where the API supports it, universally everywhere else
• 🟢 Honest failures — bot-walls and rate limits come back as structured envelopes with a manual-fallback URL, never silent lies

Sources: OpenAlex, Crossref, arXiv, DOAJ, OpenReview, INSPIRE-HEP, ERIC, Unpaywall, ORCID, Papers with Code, Semantic Scholar, ProofWiki (math proofs), NSSD/Baidu Scholar/AMiner/ScienceDB (China), GARUDA/SINTA/OneSearch/RAMA/Moraref/Neliti/BRIN (Indonesia), Google Scholar, and premium ones (ADS, AlphaXiv, Scopus, Lens, Dimensions, WoS). Full table below.

📦 Install

Requires: uv. No API key needed to start.

uv tool install paper-research-mcp

That's it — the server binary paper-research-mcp is now on your PATH.

Connect it to your MCP client

Add one block to your client's MCP config, then restart the client. This is the tested, working shape (ZCode & modern clients that take a bare server map):

{
  "paper-research": {
    "type": "stdio",
    "command": "uvx",
    "args": ["paper-research-mcp"]
  }
}

Clients that wrap servers under a mcpServers key (Claude Desktop, Cursor):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "paper-research": { "command": "uvx", "args": ["paper-research-mcp"] }
  }
}

Where the config file lives:

Already uv tool installed and the binary is on your client's PATH? Pointing straight at it also works: "command": "paper-research-mcp" (same type/args shape as above).

Verify: restart your client — all 36 tools appear automatically. From a terminal you can also probe it: paper-research-mcp prints 36 tools, 5 connector packs ready (stdio) and waits (Ctrl+C exits).

Update / remove:

uv tool upgrade paper-research-mcp
uv tool uninstall paper-research-mcp

From a local checkout (development): uv run paper-research-mcp inside the repo, or point the client at uv --directory <path>/Paper-Research-MCP run paper-research-mcp. See CONTRIBUTING.md.

🚀 Usage

Connect, then just ask your agent in plain language:

{
  "status": "ok",
  "source": "federation",
  "count": 2,
  "items": [
    {
      "title": "…",
      "authors": ["…"],
      "year": 2024,
      "doi": "10.…",
      "venue": "…",
      "abstract": "…",
      "url": "https://doi.org/10.…",
      "pdf": "https://…/paper.pdf",
      "source": "openalex",
      "extra": { "cited_by_count": 42 },
      "alsoIn": ["crossref", "semantic_scholar"],
      "matchedQueries": ["LLM watermarking"]
    }
  ],
  "meta": { "…": "coverage per keyword, year filter, skipped sources" }
}

🔑 Optional API keys

All free connectors work without any key. Premium connectors stay dormant until their env var is set (see .env.example):

🌐 Connectors

🇮🇩 The indonesia_research block follows the Reference.md warning: these platforms have no official APIs — they are best-effort scrapers with truthful failure envelopes.

🛠 Tools

36 tools are auto-discovered by any MCP client via tools/list — no configuration needed. Three entry points worth knowing:

• search_papers — federated search; supports single query or parallel queries: ["k1","k2"], date bounds year_from/year_to, source selection, dedup by DOI → title, and provenance (alsoIn + matchedQueries)
• list_sources — every connector with its access category and env status

Math sources: proofwiki_search / proofwiki_get (ProofWiki — definitions, theorems, complete proofs; Cloudflare best-effort with honest blocked envelopes).

Full per-source tools (e.g. openalex_search, openreview_notes, garuda_search) are listed by your client automatically after connecting.

🧩 Skills

skills/research/ — a companion agent skill (SKILL.md router + workflows/ + references/) for research-grade work in any field: literature scans (field→source routing across all 31 connectors), claim verification (is a claimed result real, and what's its actual status), proof & argument verification — math, formal logic, CS correctness, legal reasoning, philosophy — with a rigor checklist that separates validity from soundness, counterexample / falsification hunts (formal, doctrinal, empirical), and numeric sanity checks. It uses this MCP's tools when connected and falls back to manual search when not — see skills/README.md for the one-command install (copy the folder into your agent's skills directory).

🏗 Architecture

pyproject.toml                      ← uv package ([project.scripts] paper-research-mcp)
└── src/paper_research_mcp/
    ├── server.py                   ← MCP stdio entry (official `mcp` SDK, lowlevel Server)
    ├── registry.py                 ← 31 connectors, auth-gating, universal year post-filter
    ├── federation.py               ← search_papers: queries×sources parallel (pool 8), dedup, provenance
    ├── core.py                     ← httpx w/ timeout, standardized item schema, envelopes, year filter
    └── sources/
        ├── free.py        (11)  OpenAlex Crossref arXiv DOAJ S2 OpenReview INSPIRE ERIC Unpaywall ORCID PwC
        ├── indonesia.py    (8)  GARUDA SINTA OneSearch RAMA Moraref Neliti BRIN Google Scholar
        ├── china.py        (5)  NSSD Baidu Scholar AMiner ScienceDB CSTR
        ├── premium.py      (6)  ADS AlphaXiv Scopus Lens Dimensions WoS
        └── proofwiki.py    (1)  ProofWiki search/get (MediaWiki API, CC BY-SA)

🧪 Testing

uv run python tests/e2e_all_tools.py

Live suite with 38 checks: all 36 tools one by one (envelope-shape validation + per-category status expectations), all three federation modes, year-filter leak checks, and the MCP stdio handshake in a subprocess. Scraper sources returning blocked count as PASS — the envelope is the contract, not the network mood. Last run: 38/38 PASS.

🤝 Contributing

See CONTRIBUTING.md — how to run the tests, add a connector, and the release process.

📄 License

MIT. Source of the connector plan: Collection/Markdown/Refer/Reference.md (paper-search-mcp ecosystem + indonesia_research + China platforms + premium connectors).