Papers MCP

An MCP server for searching, extracting, and exploring academic papers with citation-aware ranking.

• Search arXiv with Lucene query syntax
• Extract paper content as clean Markdown with math, figures, and tables
• Citation-ranked search with venue, year filters, and pagination
• Citation graph traversal and related paper discovery

Installation

Claude Code

claude mcp add papers-mcp -- npx papers-mcp

Claude Desktop / Cursor / Windsurf

Add to your MCP client config:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "papers-mcp": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "papers-mcp"]
    }
  }
}

Config file locations:

• Claude Desktop: ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json
• Cursor: ~/.cursor/mcp.json
• Windsurf: ~/.codeium/windsurf/mcp_config.json

Tools

resolve-arxiv-id

Search arXiv by title, author, or Lucene query to resolve paper IDs.

Parameter	Type	Required	Description
query	string	Yes	Paper title, author name, or arXiv search query

Supports arXiv Lucene-style field prefixes: ti:, au:, abs:, cat:, all:.

extract-paper

Extract paper content as clean Markdown with math notation preserved.

Parameter	Type	Required	Description
arxivId	string	Yes	arXiv ID (e.g., 1706.03762)
level	enum	No	abstract, body (default), appendix, or all

search-papers

Search papers with citation-ranked results, including citation counts, venue, year, and arXiv IDs when available. Requires BRIGHTDATA_API_TOKEN.

Parameter	Type	Required	Description
query	string	Yes	Search query
yearLow	number	No	Earliest publication year
yearHigh	number	No	Latest publication year
sortByDate	boolean	No	Sort by date instead of relevance
start	number	No	Pagination offset (0, 10, 20, …)

find-citing-papers

Find papers that cite a given paper by cluster ID (from search-papers results). Requires BRIGHTDATA_API_TOKEN.

Parameter	Type	Required	Description
clusterId	string	Yes	Cluster ID from search-papers results
start	number	No	Pagination offset (0, 10, 20, …)

find-related-papers

Find topically related papers by paper ID (from search-papers results). Requires BRIGHTDATA_API_TOKEN.

Parameter	Type	Required	Description
paperId	string	Yes	Paper ID from search-papers results
start	number	No	Pagination offset (0, 10, 20, …)

Environment Variables

Variable	Required	Used by
BRIGHTDATA_API_TOKEN	For citation search tools	search-papers, find-citing-papers, find-related-papers

To set it in your MCP config, add an env block:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "papers-mcp": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "papers-mcp"],
      "env": {
        "BRIGHTDATA_API_TOKEN": "your-token"
      }
    }
  }
}

License

MIT