Academia MCP

MCP server with tools to search, fetch, analyze, and report on scientific papers and datasets.

Features

• ArXiv search and download

• ACL Anthology search

• Hugging Face datasets search

• Semantic Scholar citations and references

• Web search via Exa, Brave, or Tavily

• Web page crawler, LaTeX compilation, PDF reading

• Optional LLM-powered tools for document QA and research proposal workflows

Requirements

• Python 3.12+

Install

• Using pip (end users):

• For development (uv + Makefile):

Quickstart

• Run over HTTP (default transport):

• Run over stdio (for local MCP clients like Claude Desktop):

Notes:

• Transports: stdio, sse, streamable-http.

• host/port are used for HTTP transports; ignored for stdio. Default port is 5056 (or PORT).

Claude Desktop config

Available tools (one-liners)

• arxiv_search: Query arXiv with field-specific queries and filters.

• arxiv_download: Fetch a paper by ID and convert to structured text (HTML/PDF modes).

• anthology_search: Search ACL Anthology with fielded queries and optional date filtering.

• hf_datasets_search: Find Hugging Face datasets with filters and sorting.

• s2_get_citations: List papers citing a given arXiv paper (Semantic Scholar Graph).

• s2_get_references: List papers referenced by a given arXiv paper.

• visit_webpage: Fetch and normalize a web page.

• web_search: Unified search wrapper; available when at least one of Exa/Brave/Tavily keys is set.

• exa_web_search, brave_web_search, tavily_web_search: Provider-specific search.

• get_latex_templates_list, get_latex_template: Enumerate and fetch built-in LaTeX templates.

• compile_latex: Compile LaTeX to PDF in WORKSPACE_DIR.

• read_pdf: Extract text per page from a PDF.

• download_pdf_paper, review_pdf_paper: Download and optionally review PDFs (requires LLM + workspace).

• document_qa: Answer questions over provided document chunks (requires LLM).

• extract_bitflip_info, generate_research_proposals, score_research_proposals: Research proposal helpers (requires LLM).

Availability notes:

• Set WORKSPACE_DIR to enable compile_latex, read_pdf, download_pdf_paper, and review_pdf_paper.

• Set OPENROUTER_API_KEY to enable LLM tools (document_qa, review_pdf_paper, and bitflip tools).

• Set one or more of EXA_API_KEY, BRAVE_API_KEY, TAVILY_API_KEY to enable web_search and provider tools.

Environment variables

Set as needed, depending on which tools you use:

• OPENROUTER_API_KEY: required for LLM-related tools.

• BASE_URL: override OpenRouter base URL.

• DOCUMENT_QA_MODEL_NAME: override default model for document_qa.

• BITFLIP_MODEL_NAME: override default model for bitflip tools.

• TAVILY_API_KEY: enables Tavily in web_search.

• EXA_API_KEY: enables Exa in web_search and visit_webpage.

• BRAVE_API_KEY: enables Brave in web_search.

• WORKSPACE_DIR: directory for generated files (PDFs, temp artifacts).

• PORT: HTTP port (default 5056).

You can put these in a .env file in the project root.

Docker

Build the image:

Run the server (HTTP):

Or use existing image: phoenix120/academia_mcp

Examples

• Comprehensive report screencast (YouTube)

• Single paper screencast (YouTube)

Makefile targets

• make install: install the package in editable mode with uv

• make validate: run black, flake8, and mypy (strict)

• make test: run the test suite with pytest

• make publish: build and publish using uv

LaTeX/PDF requirements

Only needed for LaTeX/PDF tools. Ensure a LaTeX distribution is installed and pdflatex is on PATH, as well as latexmk. On Debian/Ubuntu: