🔬 Academic Research & Sci-Hub MCP Server

Empower AI agents to conduct real-world academic literature reviews, citation snowballing, and multi-tiered full-text PDF retrieval.

Unlike basic academic search tools that only perform rudimentary keyword matching, Academic Research MCP simulates how human researchers actually conduct literature reviews: multi-database screening, citation ranking, backward and forward citation chaining (snowballing), and dual-tier full-text retrieval (Sci-Hub + Open Access fallbacks).

📑 Table of Contents

• Why This Server?

• Architecture & Workflow

• Databases Covered

• Available MCP Tools

• Installation & Quickstart

• Configuration Guides

  • Google Antigravity IDE

  • Claude Desktop

  • Cursor IDE

• Environment Variables

• Usage Examples

• License & Disclaimer

Related MCP server: PapersFlow

💡 Why This Server?

Standard academic tools and simple MCP servers suffer from four critical flaws:

1. Arbitrary Ranking: They return results sorted only by raw textual query matching, omitting foundational papers with thousands of citations.

2. Missing Citations (Snowballing): Real researchers never rely on keywords alone; they follow citation graphs (backward references and forward citing works).

3. The 2021 Sci-Hub Freeze: The Sci-Hub repository has limited updates for papers published between 2021 and 2026. Without legal Open Access fallbacks (Unpaywall, Europe PMC), recent papers fail to resolve.

4. Blind Spots: They ignore regional literature (e.g., Latin American public health in SciELO) and cutting-edge Preprints (medRxiv, bioRxiv, arXiv).

Academic Research MCP solves all of these.

🏛 Architecture & Workflow

                        [ USER / AI AGENT ]
                                 │
                                 ▼
                     1. MULTI-DATABASE SCREENING
       ┌─────────────────────────┼─────────────────────────┐
       ▼                         ▼                         ▼
   Europe PMC / PubMed         SciELO            Preprint Repositories
   (Global Health / Bio)   (Latin America / SUS)  (bioRxiv, medRxiv, arXiv)
       │                         │                         │
       └─────────────────────────┼─────────────────────────┘
                                 ▼
                     2. SEMINAL SELECTION (Top Cited)
                                 │
                                 ▼
                     3. CITATION SNOWBALLING
              ┌──────────────────┴──────────────────┐
              ▼                                     ▼
     get_paper_references                  get_paper_citations
   (Backward: Foundational)              (Forward: State of the Art)
              │                                     │
              └──────────────────┬──────────────────┘
                                 ▼
                     4. DUAL-TIER PDF RESOLUTION
              ┌──────────────────┴──────────────────┐
              ▼                                     ▼
        Sci-Hub Mirror                        Open Access
     (Paywalled Publishers:              (Unpaywall / Repositories:
   Elsevier, Springer, Wiley)                Recent & Open Works)
              └──────────────────┬──────────────────┘
                                 ▼
                        download_scihub_pdf
                     (Direct binary download)

🌐 Databases Covered

🛠 Available MCP Tools

1. search_academic_papers

Unified search engine with citation ranking and automated PDF resolution.

• Arguments:

  • query (string, required): Keywords or topic.

  • num_results (integer, default: 10): Max records to return (up to 50).

  • sort_by (string, default: "citations"): "citations" (most cited first), "relevance", or "date".

  • database (string, default: "europe_pmc"): "europe_pmc", "openalex", "scielo", "preprints", "biorxiv", "medrxiv", "arxiv".

  • year_min / year_max (integer, optional): Filter publication range (e.g., 2021).

2. search_scielo_latin_america

Specialized search for Latin American and Brazilian literature.

• Arguments:

  • query (string, required): Term in Portuguese, Spanish, or English.

  • num_results (integer, default: 10): Number of papers.

  • sort_by (string, default: "citations"): "citations" or "relevance".

3. search_preprints_database

Direct search for unpublished and pre-print research.

• Arguments:

  • query (string, required): Search query.

  • repository (string, default: "all"): "all", "medrxiv", "biorxiv", or "arxiv".

  • num_results (integer, default: 10): Number of papers.

  • sort_by (string, default: "date"): "date" (newest first) or "citations".

4. get_paper_citations (Forward Snowballing)

Discovers subsequent breakthroughs and debates that cited a given paper.

• Arguments:

  • doi (string, required): Target paper DOI.

  • num_results (integer, default: 10): Max citing papers to return.

5. get_paper_references (Backward Snowballing)

Recovers foundational methodologies and classical works cited in the paper.

• Arguments:

  • doi (string, required): Target paper DOI.

  • num_results (integer, default: 10): Max cited references to return.

6. search_scihub_by_doi

Resolves direct PDF URL for any DOI via Sci-Hub with Open Access fallback.

• Arguments:

  • doi (string, required): Target DOI.

7. search_scihub_by_title

Finds an article by exact or partial title, recovers its DOI, and resolves the PDF.

• Arguments:

  • title (string, required): Article title.

8. download_scihub_pdf

Streams and writes the PDF file directly to local disk, verifying %PDF headers.

• Arguments:

  • pdf_url (string, required): Direct PDF URL.

  • output_path (string, required): Local file path (e.g. C:/Users/User/Downloads/paper.pdf).

9. get_paper_tldr (Ai2 Asta / Semantic Scholar AI Summary)

Retrieves a 1-sentence AI executive summary (TLDR) and influential citation count.

• Arguments:

  • doi (string, required): Target paper DOI.

10. get_similar_papers (ResearchRabbit-style Discovery)

Finds semantically and co-citationally related papers starting from a seed paper.

• Arguments:

  • doi (string, required): Seed paper DOI.

  • num_results (integer, default: 10): Number of similar papers.

11. export_papers_to_bibtex (Zotero & VOSviewer Integration)

Exports official BibTeX citations for a list of DOIs into a .bib file for instant drag-and-drop into reference managers or network mapping tools.

• Arguments:

  • dois (array of strings, required): List of DOIs.

  • output_path (string, required): Local .bib destination path.

12. generate_author_request_template (Direct Author Request)

Generates a polite, ready-to-send email or ResearchGate message to the corresponding author when an article cannot be found in open repositories.

• Arguments:

  • doi (string, required): Target paper DOI.

  • language (string, default: "pt"): "pt" or "en".

🚀 Installation & Quickstart

Prerequisites

• Python 3.10+

• uv (recommended) or standard pip

Using uv (Recommended)

Clone the repository and install dependencies in an isolated virtual environment:

git clone https://github.com/your-username/academic-research-mcp.git
cd academic-research-mcp

# Create environment and install
uv venv
uv pip install -e .

⚙ Configuration Guides

Google Antigravity IDE

Add to ~/.gemini/config/mcp_config.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "academic-scihub": {
      "command": "python",
      "args": [
        "-u",
        "/path/to/academic-research-mcp/src/academic_mcp/server.py"
      ],
      "env": {
        "PYTHONUNBUFFERED": "1",
        "SCIHUB_BASE_URL": "https://sci-hub.ren",
        "SCIHUB_TIMEOUT_SECONDS": "10"
      }
    }
  }
}

Claude Desktop

Add to claude_desktop_config.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "academic-scihub": {
      "command": "uv",
      "args": [
        "run",
        "--directory",
        "/path/to/academic-research-mcp",
        "academic-mcp"
      ],
      "env": {
        "SCIHUB_BASE_URL": "https://sci-hub.ren"
      }
    }
  }
}

Cursor IDE

Add to .cursor/mcp.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "academic-scihub": {
      "command": "python",
      "args": ["-u", "/path/to/academic-research-mcp/src/academic_mcp/server.py"]
    }
  }
}

🔧 Environment Variables

🧪 Usage Examples

Run the complete workflow demo:

python examples/demo_workflow.py

Output:

======================================================================
STEP 1: MULTI-DATABASE SCREENING
======================================================================
[Europe PMC] Top cited papers for: 'deforestation climate malaria amazon basin'
  1. Present and future arboviral threats (2010) | 1085 citations | DOI: 10.1016/j.antiviral.2009.10.008

[SciELO Latin America] Regional studies for: 'dengue brasil clima'
  - Leptospirosis: Puesta al día (2007) | DOI: 10.4067/s0716-10182007000300008

[Preprints (2025-2026)] Recent unpublished papers:
  - Modelling Malaria at the Human–Environment Interface in the Cross-Border Oiapoque Basin [Research Square] (2026)

======================================================================
STEP 2 & 3: CITATION SNOWBALLING FOR CORE PAPER
======================================================================
[Backward Snowballing] Foundational references:
  <- The Arboviruses: Epidemiology and Ecology (2019) | 1240 citations
[Forward Snowballing] Seminal papers citing this work later:
  -> Zika Virus (2016) | 1466 citations

======================================================================
STEP 4: FULL-TEXT RETRIEVAL & DOWNLOAD
======================================================================
Downloading from: https://sci.bban.top/pdf/10.1016/j.antiviral.2009.10.008.pdf#view=FitH
Download result: {'success': True, 'path': '.../sample_downloaded_paper.pdf', 'size_bytes': 2852792}

📄 License & Disclaimer

This project is licensed under the MIT License.

Disclaimer: This tool is developed for educational, academic, and research purposes. Users are responsible for complying with copyright laws, publisher terms of service, and local intellectual property regulations.