Paper Search MCP
An MCP server that enables AI assistants to search and retrieve academic papers from multiple sources including arXiv, PubMed, bioRxiv, medRxiv, Google Scholar, IACR, and Semantic Scholar through a unified interface.
Score Breakdown
⚙ Agent Friendliness
🔒 Security
Academic paper search MCP. Semantic Scholar/arXiv access. Public research data — low security risk. Rate limits per API key. No PII involved.
⚡ Reliability
Best When
A researcher or AI agent needs to find relevant academic papers across multiple preprint and index databases without switching between browser tabs or APIs.
Avoid When
Full-text retrieval and analysis of paywalled papers is needed, or the workflow requires structured citation management integration.
Use Cases
- • Searching arXiv and PubMed for papers on a research topic directly from Claude or other MCP clients
- • Performing multi-source literature reviews across biomedical and CS preprint servers in a single query
- • Retrieving paper metadata and abstracts for citation and research synthesis workflows
- • Using Semantic Scholar's enhanced API for citation graph and influence data
Not For
- • Full-text PDF download and parsing workflows (retrieval focus, not content extraction)
- • Paid/paywalled journal databases like IEEE Xplore or Springer without Sci-Hub fallback
- • Real-time or news-style content (academic preprints only)
Interface
Authentication
Optional Semantic Scholar API key via environment variable for enhanced rate limits. Other sources require no auth.
Pricing
MIT license. Underlying APIs (Semantic Scholar) may have rate limits on free tier.
Agent Metadata
Known Gotchas
- ⚠ Sci-Hub inclusion raises legal concerns in some jurisdictions
- ⚠ Google Scholar scraping may be rate-limited or blocked without API key
- ⚠ No pagination for large result sets documented
- ⚠ Planned sources (IEEE, ACM) not yet implemented
Alternatives
Full Evaluation Report
Detailed scoring breakdown, competitive positioning, security analysis, and improvement recommendations for Paper Search MCP.
Scores are editorial opinions as of 2026-03-06.