cinii-mcp

A FastMCP stdio server exposing the CiNii Research API — Japan's national academic database, operated by the National Institute of Informatics (NII) — as seven tools for use with Claude Desktop and other MCP clients.

CiNii Research aggregates metadata from KAKEN, CiNii Articles, CiNii Books, IRDB, Crossref, DataCite, PubMed, and NDL Search. There is no established open MCP tooling for it, so this server fills that gap for researchers querying Japanese-language scholarship.

Tools

Results come from the CiNii Research OpenSearch v2 API as JSON-LD, formatted into readable text with titles, authors, source, date, DOI, and links.

Related MCP server: article-mcp

Prerequisites

• Python 3.10+ on PATH.

• A CiNii Web API application ID (appid) — free; required.

Getting an application ID

The CiNii Research API requires a registered application ID, sent as a parameter on every request.

1. Register at the CiNii Web API Developer Registration page and obtain your application ID.

2. Agree to NII's API regulations: the Academic Content Service Usage Regulations, the CiNii Research Usage Detailed Regulations, and the Academic Content Service Web API Usage Detailed Regulations.

3. For commercial use, email ciniiadm@nii.ac.jp before applying.

The same application ID also works for the KAKEN API, which cinii_search_kaken uses.

Install

The server is single-file with three runtime dependencies. Use a dedicated virtual environment.

# from the directory containing server.py
py -3.11 -m venv .venv
.venv\Scripts\activate
pip install -e .

On macOS / Linux:

python3 -m venv .venv
source .venv/bin/activate
pip install -e .

Configuration

The server reads your application ID from the CINII_APPID environment variable. Copy the example file and fill it in (never commit the real value):

cp .env.example .env

CINII_APPID=your_application_id_here

Claude Desktop configuration

Add an entry to %APPDATA%\Claude\claude_desktop_config.json under mcpServers. Adjust the absolute paths and supply your appid in env.

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "cinii": {
      "command": "C:\\path\\to\\cinii-mcp\\.venv\\Scripts\\python.exe",
      "args": ["C:\\path\\to\\cinii-mcp\\server.py"],
      "env": {
        "CINII_APPID": "your_application_id_here"
      }
    }
  }
}

Restart Claude Desktop. The seven tools should appear under "cinii" in the tool list.

Usage rules

NII enforces usage rules; breaking them can get your access blocked or your registration cancelled. This server sends your appid on every request (required) and is designed to respect the rules, but you remain responsible for use:

• Do not issue a high volume of requests in a short time. Excessive access that affects other users may be blocked without notice.

• The appid is for API requests only; do not expose it in user-facing links to CiNii pages.

• Respect copyright when using retrieved data, per NII's regulations.

Citation

If this software supports your research, please cite it. See CITATION.cff, or use the "Cite this repository" button on GitHub.

License

MIT © 2026 Christopher Gerteis.

This license covers the server code only. It grants no rights over CiNii data or the CiNii API, which remain governed by NII's terms linked above.

Disclaimer

A research tool, maintained on a best-effort basis and provided "as is", without warranty. Not affiliated with or endorsed by the National Institute of Informatics.

Author

Dr Christopher Gerteis, SOAS University of London. Data provided by CiNii Research, National Institute of Informatics.