ReferenceMCP

Academic Reference Manager MCP server for Claude Desktop. Search papers, manage references, and format citations in 10,000+ styles.

Features

• Search across Crossref, Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, and PubMed

• Save references to a local SQLite database

• Organize with collections and tags

• Format citations in APA, MLA, Chicago, IEEE, Harvard, and thousands more CSL styles

• Export to BibTeX, RIS, or CSL-JSON

Related MCP server: McpDeepResearch

Installation

Using uv (Recommended)

git clone https://github.com/eduardofarina/ReferenceMCP.git
cd ReferenceMCP
uv sync

Using conda

conda env create -f environment.yml
conda activate reference-mcp
pip install -e .

Configuration

1. Copy .env.example to .env:

   cp .env.example .env

2. Edit .env with your settings (all optional but recommended):

   CONTACT_EMAIL=your@email.com

3. Add the server to your MCP client config.

   Claude Desktop (%APPDATA%\Claude\claude_desktop_config.json on Windows):

   {
     "mcpServers": {
       "reference-mcp": {
         "command": "uv",
         "args": [
           "--directory",
           "<path-to-ReferenceMCP>",
           "run",
           "server.py"
         ]
       }
     }
   }

   Replace <path-to-ReferenceMCP> with the full path to your clone (e.g. C:\Users\You\ReferenceMCP on Windows or /home/you/ReferenceMCP on Linux/macOS).

   Cursor (.cursor/mcp.json): use the same command and args, with your project path in --directory.

Available Tools

Search Tools

Library Management

Citation Formatting

Export

Example Usage

User: "Find papers about transformer architectures and save the top result"

Claude:

1. Searches with search_papers(query="transformer architectures")

2. Saves with save_reference(doi="10.48550/arXiv.1706.03762")

User: "Format my saved papers as an APA bibliography"

Claude:

1. Lists with list_references()

2. Formats with format_bibliography(reference_ids=[1,2,3], style="apa")

Testing

Test with MCP Inspector:

uv run mcp dev server.py

Citation Styles

Popular styles included:

• APA (7th Edition)

• MLA (9th Edition)

• Chicago (Author-Date & Notes-Bibliography)

• IEEE

• Harvard

• Vancouver

• Nature, Science, Cell

• And 10,000+ more from the CSL repository

Data Storage

References are stored in data/references.db (SQLite). Citation styles are cached in styles/.

License

MIT