cite-mcp

MCP Server for academic paper research — search across Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, and Crossref, get paper details, discover related works, format citations, and auto-insert references into text.

Quick Start

npx cite-mcp

Configure your MCP client:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "cite-mcp": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["cite-mcp"],
      "env": {
        "S2_API_KEY": "your-key-here",
        "OPENALEX_MAILTO": "[email protected]",
        "OPENALEX_API_KEY": "your-openalex-key",
        "CROSSREF_MAILTO": "[email protected]"
      }
    }
  }
}

env is optional — the server works without any API keys.

Tools

| Tool | Description | |------|-------------| | paper_search | Multi-source search (all/s2/openalex/crossref, auto-dedup) | | paper_detail | Full paper details by DOI, S2 Paper ID, or batch IDs | | paper_recommendations | Related paper discovery from a seed paper | | citation | Citation formatting — single paper (APA/MLA/GB7714/BibTeX/Elsevier) or multi-paper report | | paper_analysis | Cross-paper comparison + per-paper summaries for literature review | | cite_text | Auto-find supporting papers for claims in a text paragraph, outputs citation report |

Prompts

| Prompt | Description | |--------|-------------| | literature_survey | Guided workflow: search → detail → recommendations for systematic literature review | | paper_verify | Claim verification: extract claims → bidirectional search → grade (A/B/C) → report | | cite_text | Text citation: analyze text → find supporting papers → output citation report |

Configuration

API keys are optional — the server works out of the box with default rate limits. For higher limits, configure keys via any of the following methods.

Setup Methods (priority: high → low)

Method 1: MCP client env field (recommended)

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "cite-mcp": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["cite-mcp"],
      "env": {
        "S2_API_KEY": "your-key",
        "OPENALEX_MAILTO": "[email protected]",
        "OPENALEX_API_KEY": "your-openalex-key",
        "CROSSREF_MAILTO": "[email protected]"
      }
    }
  }
}

Method 2: Global .cite-mcp.env (all projects)

cat > ~/.cite-mcp.env << 'EOF'
S2_API_KEY=your-key
[email protected]
[email protected]
EOF

Method 3: Project .env (current project only)

cp .env.example .env
# edit .env with your keys

Priority

Higher-priority sources override lower ones. Within the same variable, the first source that provides a value wins:

1. MCP client env field (highest)
2. ~/.cite-mcp.env (global)
3. <project>/.env (project root)
4. cwd/.env (working directory)

Environment Variables

| Variable | API | Rate Limit | How to Get | |----------|-----|------------|-------------| | S2_API_KEY | Semantic Scholar | 100 req/s → 1 req/s | https://api.semanticscholar.org/ | | OPENALEX_MAILTO | OpenAlex | Higher (polite pool) | — any email | | OPENALEX_API_KEY | OpenAlex | Required since 2025 | https://openalex.org/account (free) | | CROSSREF_MAILTO | Crossref | Higher (polite pool) | — any email |

Links

• GitHub: https://github.com/ECHOUniverse/cite-mcp
• Issues: https://github.com/ECHOUniverse/cite-mcp/issues
• License: MIT