paper-search

Agentic tools for academic paper search MCP and Skills

Installation

You can install the paper-search CLI and MCP server globally using uv:

uv tool install paper-search

Related MCP server: mcp-openalex

Configuration

Credentials and the optional contact email are read from ~/.config/paper-search/config.toml. Copy config.toml.example to that location and replace the placeholder values. The [api] values are optional; missing or empty values leave the corresponding source keyless.

Agent Integration

To use paper-search as an MCP server, add this to your agent's MCP config:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "paper-search": {
      "command": "paper-search-mcp"
    }
  }
}

Or using uvx (without prior installation):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "paper-search": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": ["--from", "paper-search", "paper-search-mcp"]
    }
  }
}

Usage

OpenAlex retired its mailto polite pool in February 2026. Without an OpenAlex key, the service provides roughly 100 free credits per day before returning 429 or 409 responses.