MCP.Market

Scholar MCP server

by mlintangmz2765·io.github.mlintangmz2765/scholar·v1.0.0
No reviews yet

Hardened Scholar MCP for deep academic research (Scopus, OpenAlex, Unpaywall) with PDF vision.

C69/100grade C
Write a reviewInstall
What users say
No reviews yet
Be the first
Safety scan
C69/100

full report

Adoption
New

0 stars15 downloads/wk

Reviews

Write one

Nobody has reviewed Scholar yet.

If you have run it, two minutes of your experience saves the next person an afternoon.

Scholar tools (18)

write = sends, deletes, buys or posts

Read from the package source without running it. The installed server may list more.

  • autocomplete_authors_tool

    Rapidly autocomplete author names via OpenAlex to find the correct OpenAlex ID. Useful for disambiguation before tracking works.

  • batch_lookup_tool

    Batch-fetch metadata for multiple DOIs in a single call. Accepts a list of DOIs (up to 50). Returns title, authors, year, citation count, and OA status for each. Useful for processing reference lists or comparing multiple papers at once.

  • fetch_pdf_text_unpaywall_tool

    An all-in-one bypass. Takes a DOI, resolves its best PDF on Unpaywall, and directly downloads/extracts the text using PyMuPDF.

  • format_citation_tool

    Format a citation for a paper in a specific style. Supported styles: apa, ieee, chicago-author-date, harvard-cite-them-right, vancouver, modern-language-association, turabian-fullnote-bibliography. Uses CrossRef/DOI content negotiation for authoritative formatting.

  • get_author_profile_scopus_tool

    Retrieve Elsevier Scopus Author Profile strictly using a Scopus Author ID (digits). Returns precise academic h-index and document metrics from Scopus.

  • get_bibtex_tool

    Generate a BibTeX entry for a paper given its DOI. Uses CrossRef content negotiation to produce a properly formatted BibTeX string ready for use in LaTeX documents.

  • get_citations_tool

    Tracks lineage by retrieving a paper's citations. Provide a DOI (10.xxx) or OpenAlex ID (Wxxx). Set direction="references" to see who this paper cites. Set direction="citations" to see who cited this paper recently.

  • get_full_text_tool

    Extracts full text from an Open Access PDF or HTML page given its URL. This is best used after finding an OA PDF link from search_papers_openalex. Use start_page/end_page (1-indexed) to extract only specific pages from long PDFs. Warning: This can return a very large string.

  • get_full_text_visual_tool

    Multimodal Vision Tool. Downloads a PDF and renders the specified number of pages identically into images for the AI to 'look at'. Use this if the user asks you to analyze a graph, table, format, or layout in the paper. If the text extractor doesn't capture formatting, you can use this tool to 'see' the actual PDF! Returns a sequence of texts and images (multimodal format natively parsed). Warning

  • get_paper_details_tool

    Get detailed metadata and the full abstract for a specific paper. If the paper_id looks like a Scopus ID (e.g., SCOPUS_ID:85123) or a DOI (10.xxx), it uses Scopus. Returns formatted detailed text.

  • get_related_works_tool

    Find related/similar papers for a given paper. Accepts a DOI (10.xxx) or OpenAlex ID (Wxxx). Uses OpenAlex's bibliographic coupling and co-citation analysis to find semantically related works.

  • get_unpaywall_link_tool

    Checks the Unpaywall database using a DOI to find a legal Open Access PDF link. If found, returns the URL. If not, returns that it's behind a strict paywall.

  • retrieve_author_works_tool

    Retrieve chronologically sorted publications for an OpenAlex author ID. E.g., input 'W123456789' or 'https://openalex.org/A123456789'.

  • search_author_by_orcid_tool

    Look up an author directly by their ORCID identifier. Accepts raw ORCID (e.g. 0000-0002-9322-3515) or full URL (https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9322-3515). Returns the full author profile including h-index, works count, and affiliations.

  • search_authors_tool

    Search for deep author profiles via OpenAlex. Returns h-index, i10-index, and recent institutions.

  • search_papers_tool

    Searches the Scopus library by accepting standard textual querying or advanced Scopus Boolean Syntax (e.g. `TITLE-ABS-KEY(artificial intelligence) AND PUBYEAR > 2020`). Returns metadata summaries. Set use_scopus=False to use OpenAlex which guarantees Open Access PDF links but might have less robust abstracts in standard search. sort_by: 'relevance' (default), 'cited_by_count' (most cited first), '

  • search_titles_unpaywall_tool

    Natively search Unpaywall's database via paper titles. Set is_oa=True to strictly return Open Access results.

  • search_topics_tool

    Browse and discover research topics/concepts for a given keyword. Returns topic names, their parent fields, domains, and publication volume. Useful for mapping a research landscape, finding subfields, or identifying trending areas.

Public scan report

scanner v0.1.9 · 2026-09-27 · same rubric, same numbers if you re-run it

no findings
  • Code scan5 source files scanned25/25
  • –Live reliabilityno gateway calls yet and no remote to proben/a
  • –Tool poisoningtools not inspected (local package is not executed); not countedn/a
  • Auth qualitystatic API keys via environment variables6/15
  • Maintenancelast push 146 days ago8/15
  • Maintainer identityregistry namespace matches repository owner6/10
Overall 69/100. Components that don't apply are left out of the denominator. Any critical finding is an F.RubricAppeal a findingJSON

How Scholar compares

Against every graded MCP server, from our own scans and uptime checks. Updated after each scan run.

Safety score
69/100
higher than 33% of 48,255 servers
Tools
18
the typical server has 7
Tools that change things
0%
typical: 0%. Fewer write tools means less an agent can break
Downloads a week
15
more than 4% of 12,191 servers with a package

What its tools let an agent do: 18 read

Install Scholar in Claude Code, Cursor or VS Code

claude mcp add scholar -- uvx scholar-academic-mcp
Add to Cursor

What the publisher says

From the Scholar repository's README, as published. We do not edit it. Read it on GitHub

Scholar MCP Server

A Model Context Protocol (MCP) server providing structured access to scientific literature databases. It serves as a unified interface for Scopus, OpenAlex, Semantic Scholar, and Unpaywall, enabling AI agents to perform systematic paper discovery, author disambiguation, citation lineage tracking, and multimodal Content extraction.

Core Capabilities

  • Unified Literature Search
  • Semantic Scholar Integration — High-relevance search and detailed metadata, including AI-generated TLDRs (requires API key).
  • Scopus Integration — Targeted metadata retrieval via advanced Boolean syntax (requires API key).
  • OpenAlex Integration — Broad search across 250M+ works with abstract reconstruction.
  • Unpaywall Resolution — DOI-to-PDF cross-referencing across global Open Access repositories.
  • Sci-Hub Fallback (⚠️ Use with Caution) — Automatic mirror resolution and parsing for paywall bypassing.
  • Book Search & Extraction
  • Google Books & Open Library — Integrated search for book metadata, editions, and descriptions without API keys.
  • Library Genesis (Libgen) — Search and extract full text from books directly using PyMuPDF. Features smart caching and token-saving strategies (TOC reading, targeted keyword searching, and page range extraction).
  • Author Identification & Metrics
  • Instant author disambiguation and ID resolution via OpenAlex autocomplete.
  • Comprehensive profiles: H-index, i10-index, institutional affiliation history, and ORCID linkage.
  • Precision metrics from Elsevier (Scopus) for verified publication counts.
  • Citation Lineage Tracking
  • Map research evolution through forward citations (citing works) and backward references (cited works).
  • Structured & Multimodal Extraction
  • Text Extraction — Layout-aware parsing of OA PDFs using PyMuPDF.
  • Vision Rendering — Page-by-page PNG rendering for LLM-based analysis of charts, tables, and equations.
  • HTML Fallbacks — Extraction from web-based research resources via BeautifulSoup.
  • Topic Mapping & Field Analysis
  • Concepts and domain hierarchy discovery to map research landscapes.
  • Batch metadata retrieval for high-throughput literature processing (up to 50 DOIs/request).
  • Access Management & Fallbacks
  • Automated detection of closed-access content with human-in-the-loop instructions for manual uploads.

Architecture

graph TD
    A[LLM Agent] -->|MCP Protocol| B(Scholar MCP Server)
    B --> C{Database Router}
    C -->|Primary| D[Scopus API]
    C -->|Fallback| E[OpenAlex API]
    C -->|DOI Resolver| F[Unpaywall API]
    C -->|Citations| P[CrossRef API]
    
    D --> G{Access Check}
    E --> G
    F --> G
    P --> G
    
    G -->|Open Access| H[PDF Buffer Download]
    G -->|Closed Access| I[Human-in-the-Loop Prompt]
    H --> J[PyMuPDF Text Extractor]
    H --> K[PyMuPDF Vision Renderer]
    J --> L[Return Context to LLM]
    K --> L
    I --> L
    B --> M{Author Router}
    M -->|Profile| N[OpenAlex Authors API]
    M -->|Metrics| O[Scopus Author API]
    N --> L
    O --> L

Installation

Quick Start (via PyPI)

The fastest way to use the server is directly via PyPI:

pip install scholar-academic-mcp

Manual Setup (for Development)

# Clone the repository
git clone https://github.com/mlintangmz2765/Scholar-MCP.git
cd Scholar-MCP

Shortened. The full README is on GitHub.

Nothing above is checked by us. What we check is on the safety report.

Scholar: common questions

Is Scholar MCP server safe?
With care: it is graded C, so read the findings first (69/100). Read the Scholar safety report
How do I install Scholar?
It runs on your machine. Copy the Claude Code, Cursor, VS Code or Claude Desktop config from the install section.
Does Scholar need an API key?
Yes. The registry entry asks for SCOPUS_API_KEY, SCOPUS_INST_TOKEN.
Is Scholar maintained?
The last commit was 183 days ago (2026-05-05). The latest release is v1.0.0.
How does Scholar compare with other MCP servers?
safety score 69/100 (higher than 33% of 48,255 servers); tools 18 (the typical server has 7); tools that change things 0% (typical: 0%. Fewer write tools means less an agent can break). Full comparison.