Scholar MCP

Local MCP server that searches Google Scholar. Scrapes results with requests + BeautifulSoup -- no API keys, no paid services.

Tools

• search_papers_by_topic -- search by keywords, optional year range, paginated

• get_author_papers -- find papers by author name, paginated

Related MCP server: semantic-scholar-mcp

Install

Clone and install:

git clone https://github.com/ProPriyam/Scholar-MCP.git
cd Scholar-MCP
pip install -e .

Or run directly without cloning (needs uv):

uvx --from git+https://github.com/ProPriyam/Scholar-MCP scholar-mcp

Client setup

All configs use python -m scholar_mcp.server to start the server. This avoids PATH issues that pip install can cause on Windows.

VS Code

Add to .vscode/mcp.json:

{
	"servers": {
		"scholarMcp": {
			"type": "stdio",
			"command": "python",
			"args": ["-m", "scholar_mcp.server"],
			"env": {
				"PYTHONUNBUFFERED": "1"
			}
		}
	}
}

OpenCode

Add to opencode.json in your project root:

{
	"$schema": "https://opencode.ai/config.json",
	"mcp": {
		"scholar_mcp": {
			"type": "local",
			"command": ["python", "-m", "scholar_mcp.server"],
			"enabled": true,
			"environment": {
				"PYTHONUNBUFFERED": "1"
			}
		}
	}
}

Claude Code

claude mcp add --transport stdio --scope project scholar-mcp -- python -m scholar_mcp.server

Configuration

All optional. Set as environment variables.

Notes

• This scrapes Google Scholar HTML. It can break if Google changes their markup or blocks requests.