paper-search

name	paper-search
description	Search, download, and read academic papers from 20+ sources (arXiv, PubMed, Semantic Scholar, CrossRef, OpenAlex, etc). Use when the user asks to find papers, search academic literature, look up research papers, download a paper PDF, or extract text from a paper.

Paper Search

Search, download, and read academic papers via the paper-search CLI from the local source clone.

Local source clone:

~/.hermes/external-repos/paper-search-mcp

CLI Usage

All commands run via:

uv run --directory ~/.hermes/external-repos/paper-search-mcp paper-search <command> [args]

Search

uv run --directory ~/.hermes/external-repos/paper-search-mcp 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, for example 2020 or 2018-2022

For speed and cleaner evidence, prefer targeted sources such as -s arxiv,semantic,crossref,openalex over all unless broad coverage is needed.

Download PDF

uv run --directory ~/.hermes/external-repos/paper-search-mcp paper-search download <source> <paper_id> [-o ./downloads]

Read

uv run --directory ~/.hermes/external-repos/paper-search-mcp paper-search read <source> <paper_id> [-o ./downloads]

List Sources

uv run --directory ~/.hermes/external-repos/paper-search-mcp 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 can enable or improve sources:

• PAPER_SEARCH_MCP_UNPAYWALL_EMAIL
• PAPER_SEARCH_MCP_CORE_API_KEY
• PAPER_SEARCH_MCP_SEMANTIC_SCHOLAR_API_KEY
• PAPER_SEARCH_MCP_GOOGLE_SCHOLAR_PROXY_URL
• PAPER_SEARCH_MCP_DOAJ_API_KEY
• PAPER_SEARCH_MCP_ZENODO_ACCESS_TOKEN
• PAPER_SEARCH_MCP_IEEE_API_KEY
• PAPER_SEARCH_MCP_ACM_API_KEY

The package auto-loads .env from the current directory or the local repo root, and supports PAPER_SEARCH_MCP_ENV_FILE for an explicit env file path.

Workflow

1. Search with targeted sources to find papers.
2. Present results as a table: title, authors, year, source, DOI/URL.
3. If the user wants full text, use read <source> <paper_id>.
4. If the user wants the PDF, use download <source> <paper_id> and report the saved path.

Safety Notes

• This skill uses the CLI path only, not MCP server setup.
• Search commands make outbound requests to academic services.
• Download/read commands write files under the requested -o directory, defaulting to ./downloads.
• The source repo contains optional MCP fallback code with Sci-Hub support; do not run MCP server fallback flows or enable Sci-Hub-style retrieval unless the user explicitly asks and accepts the legal/access risk.