Search & Citation MCP

MCP server for academic paper search and IEEE citation generation. Searches across 3 sources in parallel (OpenAlex + Crossref + Semantic Scholar), generates biblatex-ieee BibTeX, validates entries, downloads PDFs, and maintains your bibliography — all through 9 LLM-accessible tools.

Install

pip install search-citation-mcp

No config required. Creates ./bibliografia.bib on first citation.

Usage

MCP Server

Add to any MCP client config:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "search-citation": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": ["search-citation-mcp"]
    }
  }
}

Config files by client:

HTTP mode for multi-client setups:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "search-citation": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": ["search-citation-mcp", "--transport", "streamable-http"],
      "env": { "MCP_PORT": "8000" }
    }
  }
}

CLI

search-citation search "photovoltaic harmonics" -n 10
search-citation add --doi 10.1016/j.rser.2015.08.042
search-citation cite --doi 10.1016/j.rser.2015.08.042
search-citation related 10.1016/j.rser.2015.08.042 -n 5
search-citation detect "10.1016/j.rser.2015.08.042"
search-citation fix-bib bibliografia.bib --dry-run
search-citation download 10.1016/j.rser.2015.08.042 -o ./pdfs
search-citation cache

Tools

Configuration

Optional environment variables:

OPENALEX_API_KEY=           # Better rate limits
SEMANTIC_SCHOLAR_API_KEY=   # Enables third search source
CROSSREF_MAILTO=            # Crossref polite pool
UNPAYWALL_EMAIL=            # PDF downloads via Unpaywall
BIBLIOGRAPHY_PATH=          # Custom .bib path (default: ./bibliografia.bib)
EZPROXY_HOST=               # Institutional proxy (e.g. bibliotecabuap.elogim.com)
SCIHUB_ENABLED=1            # Enable Sci-Hub as last-resort PDF source
MCP_HOST=127.0.0.1          # HTTP transport host
MCP_PORT=8000               # HTTP transport port

BibTeX Types

article · inproceedings · book · techreport · mastersthesis · phdthesis · manual · misc · online · incollection

All validated against IEEE schema with required and optional fields. Auto-protects acronyms ({IEEE}, {CFE}, {MATLAB}) and converts month names (English/Spanish).

Development

git clone https://github.com/isaacwars/search-citation-mcp.git
cd search-citation-mcp
python -m venv .venv
source .venv/bin/activate
pip install -e .
pytest tests/ -v        # 123 tests

Security

• stdio transport by default — no network exposure
• All credentials via environment variables, never hardcoded
• Path traversal blocked on every file operation
• Output confined to workspace directory

License

Apache 2.0 with Commons Clause — see LICENSE