mcp-pubmed
Server Configuration
Describes the environment variables required to run the server.
| Name | Required | Description | Default |
|---|---|---|---|
| NCBI_EMAIL | No | Optionally set your email for NCBI's usage tracking. | |
| NCBI_API_KEY | No | Optional API key for higher rate limits. Without a key, requests are limited to 3 per second. With a key, the limit increases to 10 per second. |
Instructions
Guidance the server publishes about itself, which clients place ahead of the tool catalog so the model reads it before choosing anything.
This server publishes no instructions, or was last inspected before Glama recorded them.
Capabilities
Features and capabilities supported by this server
Protocol revision2025-11-25
| Capability | Details |
|---|---|
| tools | {
"listChanged": true
} |
Tools
Functions exposed to the LLM to take actions
| Name | Description |
|---|---|
| search_articlesA | Search PubMed for biomedical articles. Supports full PubMed query syntax including field tags ([Title], [Author], [MeSH]), boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT), and date ranges. |
| get_articleA | Get full metadata for a specific PubMed article by PMID, including title, abstract, authors, journal, publication date, DOI, and MeSH terms. |
| get_citationsA | Get articles that cite a given PubMed article (PMID). Useful for forward citation tracking. |
| get_relatedA | Get related articles for a given PubMed article (PMID), ranked by relevance using NCBI's algorithm. |
| search_meshC | Search the Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) vocabulary. Useful for finding standardized biomedical terms, tree numbers, and scope notes. |
| get_full_text_linksA | Get links to free full text versions of an article (e.g., PubMed Central). Returns PMC links and publisher free-access URLs. |
Prompts
Interactive templates invoked by user choice
| Name | Description |
|---|---|
No prompts | |
Resources
Contextual data attached and managed by the client
| Name | Description |
|---|---|
No resources | |
TDQS
Scored across 6 tools
Each tool has a clearly distinct purpose: get_article retrieves metadata for a single article, get_citations finds citing articles, get_full_text_links provides access links, get_related finds related articles, search_articles searches the article database, and search_mesh searches the MeSH vocabulary. There is no overlap or ambiguity between these functions.
All tools follow a consistent verb_noun pattern with snake_case naming: get_article, get_citations, get_full_text_links, get_related, search_articles, and search_mesh. The verbs 'get' and 'search' are used appropriately and consistently throughout.
With 6 tools, this server is well-scoped for PubMed access. Each tool serves a specific, non-trivial function in biomedical literature retrieval, and the count is appropriate for the domain without being overwhelming or insufficient.
The toolset covers core PubMed workflows: searching articles, retrieving metadata, finding citations and related articles, accessing full text, and searching MeSH terms. A minor gap is the lack of tools for user-specific functions like saving articles to a library or managing alerts, but these are not essential for basic agent operations.