Google Scholar MCP Server

The most comprehensive Google Scholar MCP server for AI assistants

Installation • Quick Start • Tools • API Reference • Contributing

A powerful Model Context Protocol (MCP) server that connects AI assistants like Claude to Google Scholar. Search academic publications, find researchers, analyze citations, download papers, and perform advanced research workflows.

🌟 Features

Tools (11 Total)

Prompts (6 Total)

Key Advantages

• 11 Powerful Tools: Search, citations, related articles, versions, downloads & more

• Advanced Search: Filter by language, patents, review articles, and more

• Local Paper Storage: Download and cache papers for offline access

• Intelligent Caching: Reduce redundant requests with TTL-based caching

• Rich Metadata: Abstracts, citation counts, h-index, coauthors, and more

• Rate Limiting: Built-in protection against Google Scholar blocking

• Error Handling: Graceful handling of rate limits and CAPTCHAs

• BibTeX Support: Generate proper academic citations

• Advanced Prompts: Pre-built workflows for deep paper analysis and research synthesis

Related MCP server: paper-mcp

📦 Installation

Via Smithery (Recommended)

npx -y @smithery/cli install @dihannahdi/google-scholar-mcp --client claude

Via npm

npm install -g @dihannahdi/google-scholar-mcp

From Source

git clone https://github.com/dihannahdi/google-scholar-mcp.git
cd google-scholar-mcp
npm install
npm run build

🚀 Quick Start

Running the Server

# If installed globally
google-scholar-mcp

# From source
npm start

# Development mode
npm run dev

Configuration for Claude Desktop

Add to your claude_desktop_config.json:

macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json Windows: %APPDATA%\Claude\claude_desktop_config.json

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "google-scholar": {
      "command": "node",
      "args": ["/path/to/google-scholar-mcp/dist/index.js"],
      "env": {
        "SCHOLAR_STORAGE_PATH": "~/.google-scholar-mcp/papers",
        "SCHOLAR_RATE_LIMIT_MS": "3000",
        "SCHOLAR_CACHE_ENABLED": "true",
        "SCHOLAR_CACHE_TTL_MS": "3600000",
        "SERPAPI_KEY": "your_serpapi_key_here",
        "SCHOLAR_USE_SERPAPI_FALLBACK": "true"
      }
    }
  }
}

Or using npx:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "google-scholar": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@dihannahdi/google-scholar-mcp"]
    }
  }
}

Environment Variables

🔐 SerpAPI Fallback (Recommended)

Google Scholar aggressively blocks automated access. To ensure 100% uptime, we recommend using SerpAPI as a fallback:

1. Get a free API key at serpapi.com (100 free searches/month)

2. Set environment variables:

   export SERPAPI_KEY="your_serpapi_key"
   export SCHOLAR_USE_SERPAPI_FALLBACK="true"

How it works:

• The server first attempts direct scraping (free, but may be blocked)

• If blocked, it automatically falls back to SerpAPI (reliable, paid)

• Results are normalized to the same format regardless of source

Benefits of SerpAPI:

• ✅ 100% uptime guarantee

• ✅ No CAPTCHA or blocking issues

• ✅ Handles all anti-bot measures

• ✅ Rich structured data

• ✅ Author profiles, citations, related articles

📖 Usage Examples

Search for Publications

Search for recent machine learning papers about transformers

Tool: search_publications
Arguments:
  query: "transformer neural network"
  yearStart: 2020
  numResults: 10
  sortBy: "relevance"

Find an Author

Find researchers working on quantum computing at MIT

Tool: search_author
Arguments:
  query: "quantum computing"
  organization: "MIT"
  numResults: 5

Get Author Profile

Get detailed profile for Geoffrey Hinton

Tool: get_author_profile
Arguments:
  scholarId: "JicYPdAAAAAJ"

Get Citations

Find papers citing "Attention Is All You Need"

Tool: get_citations
Arguments:
  clusterId: "4054916225996727837"
  numResults: 10
  sortBy: "date"

Generate BibTeX

Create BibTeX for a paper

Tool: generate_bibtex
Arguments:
  title: "Attention Is All You Need"
  authors: ["Ashish Vaswani", "Noam Shazeer", "Niki Parmar"]
  year: 2017
  venue: "Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems"

🔧 API Reference

search_publications

Search Google Scholar for academic publications.

Parameters:

Returns:

• List of publications with title, authors, abstract, venue, year, citation count, URLs

search_author

Search for academic researchers.

Parameters:

Returns:

• List of author profiles with name, affiliation, interests, citation count

get_author_profile

Get detailed author information.

Parameters:

Returns:

• Complete profile with publications, h-index, i10-index, coauthors, citation history

get_citations

Get papers that cite a specific publication.

Parameters:

Returns:

• List of citing publications with details

generate_bibtex

Generate a BibTeX citation entry.

Parameters:

Returns:

• Formatted BibTeX entry

get_related_articles

Find related articles for a given publication.

Parameters:

Returns:

• List of related publications with metadata

get_all_versions

Get all available versions of a paper.

Parameters:

Returns:

• List of all versions (preprint, published, etc.)

download_paper

Download and store a paper locally.

Parameters:

Returns:

• Path to stored file and confirmation

list_papers

List all locally stored papers.

Parameters:

Returns:

• List of stored papers with metadata

read_paper

Read the content of a stored paper.

Parameters:

Returns:

• Paper content (text format)

advanced_search

Advanced search with additional filters.

Parameters:

Returns:

• List of publications matching criteria

🛠️ Development

Project Structure

google-scholar-mcp/
├── src/
│   ├── index.ts          # MCP server entry point
│   ├── config/
│   │   └── index.ts      # Environment configuration
│   ├── types/
│   │   └── index.ts      # TypeScript type definitions
│   ├── tools/
│   │   ├── definitions.ts # Tool schemas (11 tools)
│   │   ├── handlers.ts    # Tool implementation
│   │   └── index.ts
│   ├── scraper/
│   │   ├── scholar.ts    # Google Scholar scraper
│   │   └── index.ts
│   └── utils/
│       ├── helpers.ts    # URL builders, rate limiting
│       ├── cache.ts      # In-memory caching
│       ├── storage.ts    # Local paper storage
│       └── index.ts
├── dist/                  # Compiled JavaScript
├── package.json
├── tsconfig.json
└── README.md

Building

npm run build

Testing

# Run MCP Inspector for debugging
npx @modelcontextprotocol/inspector node dist/index.js

⚠️ Limitations

1. Rate Limiting: Google Scholar may rate-limit or block requests. The server includes delays and retries, but heavy usage may trigger blocks.

2. CAPTCHA: Excessive requests may trigger CAPTCHA challenges. If this happens, wait a few minutes before retrying.

3. No Official API: This server scrapes Google Scholar's web interface, which may break if Google changes their HTML structure.

4. Results Limited: Maximum 20 results per request to stay within reasonable limits.

🤝 Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please feel free to submit a Pull Request.

1. Fork the repository

2. Create your feature branch (git checkout -b feature/AmazingFeature)

3. Commit your changes (git commit -m 'Add some AmazingFeature')

4. Push to the branch (git push origin feature/AmazingFeature)

5. Open a Pull Request

📄 License

This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE file for details.

🙏 Acknowledgments

• Model Context Protocol for the MCP SDK

• Scholarly for inspiration

• The academic community for making research accessible

📬 Support

For issues and questions:

• Open an issue on GitHub

• Check the MCP documentation

Made with ❤️ for the research community