Scholar Search MCP

An MCP server for academic literature workflows in Claude, Cursor, and other MCP clients.

It combines Semantic Scholar and arXiv into one unified toolset, with fast parallel search, normalized outputs, source-aware deduplication, and practical research utilities (citations, references, author graph, recommendations, and arXiv source download).

Table of Contents

• Why this project
• Demo videos
• Install
• Quick setup (Claude Desktop / Cursor)
• Environment variables
• Tool list
• Testing with MCP Inspector
• Contributing

Why this project

Most paper tools force you to choose one source or one API style. scholar-search-mcp provides one MCP layer for literature search and graph retrieval:

• One MCP server, multiple scholarly sources
• Free-first defaults (arXiv works without keys)
• LLM-friendly outputs for downstream reasoning and agent workflows
• Practical research actions, not only search
• Unified search: search_papers runs Semantic Scholar + arXiv in parallel and deduplicates by normalized title.
• Research graph tools: details, citations, references, author profile/papers, and recommendations.
• Batch + source workflows: fetch up to 500 papers, and download/extract arXiv LaTeX sources.
• Operational controls: built-in caching plus env-based source toggles (enable/disable channels).
• Source strategy: built-in Semantic Scholar + arXiv, free-first by default (arXiv key-free), optional API key for higher Semantic Scholar limits.

Demo videos

Agent writes a survey paper with Scholar Search MCP.

Install

pip install scholar-search-mcp

Requires Python 3.10+.

Quick setup (Claude Desktop / Cursor)

Use the same server command in both clients:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "scholar-search": {
      "command": "python",
      "args": ["-m", "scholar_search_mcp"],
      "env": {
        "SCHOLAR_SEARCH_ENABLE_SEMANTIC_SCHOLAR": "true",
        "SCHOLAR_SEARCH_ENABLE_ARXIV": "true"
      }
    }
  }
}

SEMANTIC_SCHOLAR_API_KEY is optional. Add it only if you want higher Semantic Scholar rate limits:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "scholar-search": {
      "command": "python",
      "args": ["-m", "scholar_search_mcp"],
      "env": {
        "SCHOLAR_SEARCH_ENABLE_SEMANTIC_SCHOLAR": "true",
        "SCHOLAR_SEARCH_ENABLE_ARXIV": "true",
        "SEMANTIC_SCHOLAR_API_KEY": "your-key"
      }
    }
  }
}

Difference:

• Claude Desktop: edit local config file directly.
• Cursor: add an MCP server in Cursor settings UI (or corresponding settings JSON).

Claude Desktop config file locations:

• macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json
• Windows: %APPDATA%\Claude\claude_desktop_config.json
• Linux: ~/.config/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json

Environment variables

Example (arXiv only):

{
  "SCHOLAR_SEARCH_ENABLE_SEMANTIC_SCHOLAR": "false",
  "SCHOLAR_SEARCH_ENABLE_ARXIV": "true"
}

Tool list

... View full README on GitHub