Student Citations MCP server

Citations MCP

Paste a DOI or an ISBN and get a formatted citation back in APA 7, MLA 9 or Chicago author-date. You can also type the details yourself, and get the matching in-text citation. Formatting is done by tested code, so the punctuation is the same every time.

This is a free, open source MCP server. It works with Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor, VS Code Copilot and any other app that supports MCP. Lookups go to the free public Crossref and Open Library services and nothing else. There is no account or key, and nothing is stored.

Free forever. No account and no subscription.

Quick start

Add this to your AI app's MCP config. For Claude Desktop that is claudedesktopconfig.json.

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "citations": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "student-citations-mcp"]
    }
  }
}

Restart your AI app, then try one of the questions below. You need Node.js 20 or newer.

For Claude Code, run claude mcp add citations -- npx -y student-citations-mcp.

What you can ask

• "Cite 10.1038/nature14539 in APA."
• "Make an MLA citation for ISBN 9780262033848."
• "Format this as Chicago: Smith and Jones, 2020, Learning to Learn, Journal of Study Skills, volume 4, issue 2, pages 11 to 25."
• "What's the in-text citation for a quote on page 14 of that paper?"

Tools

Good to know

• Always check the result against your course's style guide or your instructor's rules. Styles have many special cases this tool does not cover, such as editors, translators and edition rules.
• Titles are used as the source gives them. APA wants sentence case for article titles, so fix capitals if your style needs it.
• Optional environment variables, CROSSREFEMAIL puts your address in lookups so Crossref can reach you about heavy use, and CROSSREFBASEURL and OPENLIBRARYBASE_URL point to other servers for testing.

Development

npm install
npm run build
npm test

Tests run against fake Crossref and Open Library servers, so they need no network.

More free student MCP servers

All free, open source and read only where they touch your accounts. Browse the full list at brightspacemcp.com/more-mcps.

Shortened. The full README is on GitHub.