Enables searching the arXiv repository with customizable query parameters and downloading full-text content from arXiv PDFs with automatic text extraction.
Supports fetching content from DOI URLs with automatic redirect handling to publisher sites and metadata extraction.
Provides comprehensive access to the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph API for literature search, paper analysis, author discovery, citation network exploration, and retrieval of academic paper metadata and metrics.
AI Research Assistant - MCP
A Model Context Protocol (MCP) server that provides AI models with comprehensive access to the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph API. This server enables intelligent literature search, paper analysis, and citation network exploration through a robust set of tools, resources, and prompts.
The MCP project extends the work we started in our academic paper on using AI as a research assistant. In that paper, we focused on retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) as a practical approach to support research tasks. By the time the paper was published, we had already moved forward with MCP, which takes the core ideas further and delivers a more capable system. While MCP isn’t covered in the paper, it continues the same effort and reflects what we learned along the way.
If you’re referencing this project, please also cite the following paper to acknowledge the original research:
Vakilzadeh, H., and Wood, D. A. (2025). The Development of a RAG-Based Artificial Intelligence Research Assistant (AIRA). Journal of Information Systems forthcoming.
Installation
To install this MCP Server visit Smithery.
Optional: Wiley Full-Text Access
To enable full-text PDF download from Wiley papers, you'll need a Wiley TDM Client Token:
Visit: Wiley Text and Data Mining
Accept the Wiley terms and conditions for Text and Data Mining
Obtain your TDM Client Token
Configure the token in your Claude Desktop MCP settings:
Requirements:
You must have institutional access or subscription to download content
Academic subscribers can access subscribed content for non-commercial research at no extra cost
Rate limits: 3 articles/second, 60 requests/10 minutes
Note:
The Semantic Scholar API allows up to 100 requests per 5 minutes. To access a higher rate limit, visit Semantic Scholar to request authentication for your project.
Features
🔍 Comprehensive Paper Search
Basic Search: Simple keyword-based paper discovery
Advanced Search: Multi-filter search with year ranges, citation thresholds, field of study filters, and publication type restrictions
Title Matching: Find papers by closest title match with confidence scoring
Batch Operations: Retrieve multiple papers efficiently (up to 500 papers per request)
👥 Author Discovery & Analysis
Search authors by name or affiliation
Retrieve detailed author profiles with metrics (h-index, citation counts, paper counts)
Access complete publication lists for any author
📊 Citation Network Analysis
Explore papers that cite a specific work
Analyze reference lists and citation patterns
Multi-depth citation network traversal for comprehensive impact analysis
📚 Field-Specific Research
Browse top papers by academic field
Filter research by publication venues
Access open access publications specifically
📄 Full-Text Access & Download
arXiv Papers
Search arXiv repository directly with customizable query parameters
Download and extract full-text from arXiv PDFs
In-memory PDF processing with automatic text extraction
Support for all arXiv paper formats (new style: 2301.12345, old style: hep-ex/0307015)
Wiley Papers
Download and extract text from Wiley academic papers
Support for institutional access and open access content
Requires Wiley TDM Client Token for full access (see configuration below)
DOI Resolution
Fetch content from any DOI URL
Automatic redirect handling to publisher sites
Extract metadata and available content