| name | paper-search |
| description | Search, download, and read academic papers from 20+ sources (arXiv, PubMed, Semantic Scholar, CrossRef, etc). Use when the user asks to find papers, search for research, look up academic literature, download a paper PDF, or extract text from a paper. |
Paper Search
Search, download, and read academic papers via the paper-search CLI.
CLI Usage
All commands run via:
paper-search <command> [args]
If paper-search is not available, install it with uv tool install paper-search-mcp. Optional API keys can be configured in ~/.config/paper-search-mcp/.env.
Search
paper-search search "<query>" -n <max_per_source> -s <sources> -y <year>
-n: results per source (default: 5)-s: comma-separated sources or "all" (default: all)-y: year filter for Semantic Scholar (e.g. "2020", "2018-2022")
For speed, prefer targeted sources (-s arxiv,semantic,crossref) over "all" unless broad coverage is needed.
Download PDF
paper-search download <source> <paper_id> [-o ./downloads]
Read (extract text)
paper-search read <source> <paper_id> [-o ./downloads]
List sources
paper-search sources
Output
search and download return JSON. read returns plain text. Config warnings go to stderr and can be ignored.
Sources
arxiv, pubmed, biorxiv, medrxiv, google_scholar, iacr, semantic, crossref, openalex, pmc, core, europepmc, dblp, openaire, citeseerx, doaj, base, zenodo, hal, ssrn, unpaywall
Optional (env vars): ieee (IEEE_API_KEY), acm (ACM_API_KEY)
Workflow
- Search with targeted sources to find papers
- Present results as a table: title, authors, year, source, DOI/URL
- If the user wants full text, use
read <source> <paper_id>
- If the user wants the PDF, use
download <source> <paper_id> and report the saved path
