Paper Search MCP

What it does

Paper Search MCP is a comprehensive academic research tool that connects AI agents to a vast network of open-access scholarly databases. It enables the discovery, retrieval, and reading of academic papers from multiple sources including arXiv, PubMed, bioRxiv, and Semantic Scholar, providing a unified interface for scientific literature review.

Tools

• search_papers: Performs a concurrent search across multiple academic platforms with automatic deduplication.
• download_with_fallback: Attempts to download a paper PDF using a chain of open-access repositories (arXiv $\rightarrow$ PMC $\rightarrow$ Unpaywall).
• read_paper: Extracts and returns the text content of a downloaded academic paper for AI analysis.
• search_unpaywall: Performs a DOI-centric lookup to find open-access versions of a specific paper.

Installation

Add the following to your claude_desktop_config.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "paper-search-mcp": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": ["paper-search-mcp"],
      "env": {
        "PAPER_SEARCH_MCP_UNPAYWALL_EMAIL": "your@email.com"
      }
    }
  }
}

Supported hosts

• claude
• cursor
• vscode-copilot