paper-search-agent-mcp

An MCP (Model Context Protocol) server that provides AI coding assistants with scholarly paper discovery, access planning, and full-text retrieval capabilities.

This package is the installable MCP server for the paper-search-agent repository.

Install

npm install -g paper-search-agent-mcp

Or run directly with npx:

npx paper-search-agent-mcp

Configuration

MCP Client Setup

For Codex CLI / Codex IDE, configure MCP in .codex/config.toml (project-scoped) or ~/.codex/config.toml:

[mcp_servers.paper_search_agent]
command = "paper-search-agent-mcp"

Or add it via CLI:

codex mcp add paper_search_agent -- paper-search-agent-mcp

For other clients that use JSON-based MCP config, use:

Add the server to your AI assistant's MCP configuration:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "paper-search-agent": {
      "command": "paper-search-agent-mcp"
    }
  }
}

config.toml

Create a config.toml in your working directory to enable/disable sources and routes. Copy from the bundled example:

cp $(npm root -g)/paper-search-agent-mcp/config.toml.example config.toml

Environment Variables

Set API keys as environment variables or in a .env file in your working directory:

| Variable | Required | Description | |---|---|---| | ELSEVIER_API_KEY | For Scopus/Elsevier | dev.elsevier.com | | SPRINGER_API_KEY | For Springer Meta | dev.springernature.com | | SPRINGER_OA_API_KEY | For Springer OA | May share key with SPRINGER_API_KEY | | UNPAYWALL_EMAIL | For Unpaywall | A valid email address | | NCBI_API_KEY | Optional | Raises PubMed rate limit | | ZOTERO_API_KEY | For Zotero | zotero.org/settings/keys | | ZOTERO_LIBRARY_ID | For Zotero | Your library ID |

Available Tools

• Discovery: search_papers, search_single_source — multi-source academic search
• Planning: resolve_and_plan, check_local_cache — DOI resolution and access planning
• Retrieval: fetch_fulltext, browser_retrieve, import_local_file — full-text acquisition
• Parsing: parse_paper, get_paper_sections — structured content extraction
• Storage: manage_corpus, export_records — corpus management and export
• Integrations: zotero_lookup, zotero_save, zotero_list_collections — Zotero library

License

MIT