cern-inspire-mcp-server
Server Details
Search INSPIRE-HEP papers, authors, experiments, HEPData records; get citation metrics and BibTeX.
- Status
- Healthy
- Uptime
- 100.0% over the last 24 hours
- Last Tested
- Transport
- Streamable HTTP · MCP 2025-11-25
- URL
- Repository
- cyanheads/cern-inspire-mcp-server
- GitHub Stars
- 1
- Server Listing
- cern-inspire-mcp-server
- ChatGPT
- –
- Claude
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TDQS
Scored across 8 tools
Each tool targets a distinct resource or action: literature search, single-paper lookup, author search, experiment search, HEPData search, citation export, citation summary, and static reference documentation. The closest potential overlap is between search_literature and search_hepdata, but HEPData is clearly scoped to measurement records rather than papers. get_paper vs export_citations is also clean: fetch full record vs produce bibliography entries.
All tools consistently use the cern_inspire_ prefix followed by a clear verb_noun or verb_noun_phrase pattern. The verbs search, get, export, and list are used predictably across the set, with no camelCase or style mixing.
Eight tools is well-scoped for an INSPIRE-HEP literature server. Each tool earns its place by covering a distinct part of the research workflow, without obvious bloat or missing basics.
The surface covers the core INSPIRE workflow well: literature search, full paper lookup, author/experiment discovery, HEPData lookup, citation export, citation summaries, and query reference documentation. Minor gaps remain, such as no direct tool for listing a paper's references or citing papers as first-class results, though get_paper returns ready-made queries for those sets. HEPData values are intentionally not returned, which is acceptable given the server's INSPIRE-focused scope.
Available Tools
8 toolscern_inspire_export_citationsExport INSPIRE citationsARead-onlyIdempotentInspect
Export INSPIRE-HEP's citation entries for the papers a literature query selects, as BibTeX or LaTeX \bibitem entries (EU or US style), keyed by INSPIRE texkeys and ready to paste into a bibliography. Name specific papers with "recid:451647 or arxiv:1207.7214 or doi:10.1016/…", or export a topic, author, or citing set with any query cern_inspire_search_literature accepts. Up to 50 entries per page; page through larger sets (only the first 10,000 matches are reachable). Entries are INSPIRE's verbatim text (long author lists arrive abbreviated as "First, Name and others").
Inputs: query (required), page, size, sort, +5 more. Returns: cap, page, error, shown, +6 more
cern_inspire_get_citation_summaryGet INSPIRE citation summaryARead-onlyIdempotentInspect
Compute INSPIRE-HEP's citation summary for one author or for any literature query: h-index, citation totals, average citations per paper, and paper counts per citation bucket (0, 1–9, 10–49, 50–99, 100–249, 250–499, 500+), each for all citeable papers and for published papers, plus citations received per year. Pass exactly one of author (a BAI, ORCID, INSPIRE ID, or author recid — resolve a name with cern_inspire_search_authors first) or query (any INSPIRE literature query: a topic, collaboration, institution, or "a "). Document type and subject filters narrow every figure. year_from and year_to narrow the summary to papers from those years, and exclude_self_citations recounts it without self-citations; any of them leaves out citations per year, which INSPIRE cannot narrow that way.
Inputs: query, author, year_to, subjects, +3 more. Returns: all, error, hIndex, notice, +8 more
cern_inspire_get_paperGet INSPIRE paperARead-onlyIdempotentInspect
Fetch one paper's full INSPIRE-HEP record by recid, arXiv ID, or DOI: contributors with affiliations and recorded roles, public attached-document links and identifiers, abstract, publication references, arXiv and DOI identifiers, keywords, subjects, citation counts, linked experiments, texkeys, and whether HEPData holds its numerical tables (record DOI, latest version, table count, hepdata.net link). Also returns ready-made literature queries for the papers citing it and for its references. Large collaboration papers can list thousands of authors; max_authors caps the list while authorCount gives the full number.
Inputs: paper (required), max_authors, author_offset. Returns: cap, core, date, dois, +39 more
cern_inspire_list_referenceINSPIRE reference vocabularyARead-onlyIdempotentInspect
Decode the vocabulary the other cern_inspire tools take: INSPIRE search syntax (field operators, boolean logic, sort orders, the 10,000-result window, and how malformed queries behave), identifier forms (recid, arXiv, DOI, BAI, ORCID, INSPIRE ID, institution recid, texkey, HEPData DOIs), the document_types and subjects filter values, citation-summary buckets, and HEPData record versions and DOIs. Static content with no upstream call; use it to build a query or to recover from an empty or unexpectedly broad result.
Inputs: topic (required). Returns: error, topic, entries
cern_inspire_search_authorsSearch INSPIRE authorsARead-onlyIdempotentInspect
Find physicist profiles in INSPIRE-HEP by name, INSPIRE BAI, ORCID, INSPIRE ID, or author recid. Each profile carries its recid, BAI, ORCID, current and past positions, advisors, arXiv categories, links, awards, and a literatureQuery that selects the person's papers in cern_inspire_search_literature. A name returns ranked candidates (a bare surname can match tens of thousands of profiles, and a less-cited namesake can rank first), so confirm the person from positions and categories before passing a bai or recid to cern_inspire_get_citation_summary. An identifier matches exactly.
Inputs: query (required), limit. Returns: cap, error, shown, notice, +4 more
cern_inspire_search_experimentsSearch INSPIRE experimentsARead-onlyIdempotentInspect
Find experiments, collaborations, and facilities in INSPIRE-HEP (ATLAS, CMS, DUNE, Belle II, …) by name, accelerator, or INSPIRE legacy name (CERN-LHC-CMS); digits alone look up an experiment recid. Each record carries the accelerator, host institutions, collaboration and subgroups, classification, lifecycle dates (proposed, approved, started, completed, ongoing), INSPIRE's paper count, a description, and a literatureQuery to pass to cern_inspire_search_literature or cern_inspire_get_citation_summary for the experiment's papers.
Inputs: query (required), limit. Returns: cap, error, shown, notice, +3 more
cern_inspire_search_hepdataSearch HEPData recordsARead-onlyIdempotentInspect
Find HEPData measurement records by physics content — process, observable, energy, collaboration — when the paper is unknown, through INSPIRE-HEP's index of every HEPData submission. Each hit carries the paper recids (pass to cern_inspire_get_paper), collaborations, keywords (reactions such as "P P --> TOP TOPBAR X", observables, centre-of-mass energies), the HEPData record DOI (recordDoi, the citation for the data), latest version, table count, and hepdataUrl, the hepdata.net record page that holds the table values; this tool does not return the values themselves. Only the first 10,000 results of a query are reachable.
Inputs: query (required), page, size, sort. Returns: cap, page, size, error, +7 more
cern_inspire_search_literatureSearch INSPIRE literatureARead-onlyIdempotentInspect
Search INSPIRE-HEP papers with INSPIRE query syntax or free text, filtered by document type, subject, and year, sorted by relevance, recency, or citations. Returns one page of papers with recid, title, first author, date, citation counts, arXiv ID, DOI, publication, and an abstract snippet; pass a recid to cern_inspire_get_paper for the full record or to cern_inspire_export_citations ("recid:N") for BibTeX. Empty recognized field clauses are invalid; other malformed syntax can widen or empty the match, so check an unexpectedly broad or empty result against cern_inspire_list_reference topic search_syntax. Only the first 10,000 results of a query are reachable.
Inputs: query (required), page, size, sort, +4 more. Returns: cap, page, size, error, +8 more
Tool Schema Changelog
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