academia_mcp

IlyaGusev/academia_mcp

3.5

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Academia MCP is a collection of tools designed to facilitate the search and retrieval of scientific papers from various academic sources.

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Academia MCP

PyPI CI Verified on MseeP

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):
pip3 install academia-mcp
  • For development (uv + Makefile):
uv venv .venv
make install

Quickstart

  • Run over HTTP (default transport):
python -m academia_mcp --transport streamable-http
# OR
uv run -m academia_mcp --transport streamable-http
  • Run over stdio (for local MCP clients like Claude Desktop):
python -m academia_mcp --transport stdio
# OR
uv run -m academia_mcp --transport stdio

Notes:

  • Transports: stdio, sse, streamable-http.
  • host/port are used for HTTP transports; ignored for stdio. Default port is 5056 (or PORT).

Authentication

Academia MCP supports optional token-based authentication for HTTP transports (streamable-http and sse). Authentication is disabled by default to maintain backward compatibility.

Enabling Authentication

Set the ENABLE_AUTH environment variable to true:

export ENABLE_AUTH=true
export TOKENS_FILE=/path/to/tokens.json  # Optional, defaults to ./tokens.json
Managing Tokens

Issue a new token:

academia_mcp auth issue-token --client-id=my-client --description="Production API client"

# Issue token with 30-day expiration
academia_mcp auth issue-token --client-id=test-client --expires-days=30

# Issue token with custom scopes
academia_mcp auth issue-token --client-id=admin --scopes="read,write,admin"

List active tokens:

academia_mcp auth list-tokens

Revoke a token:

academia_mcp auth revoke-token mcp_a1b2c3d4e5f6...
Using Tokens

Include the token in the Authorization header with the Bearer scheme or as a query parameter apiKey.

Security Notes:

  • Tokens are displayed only once during issuance. Store them securely.
  • Use HTTPS in production to protect tokens in transit.
  • The tokens.json file is automatically created with restrictive permissions (mode 600).
  • Tokens are stored in plaintext (standard practice for bearer tokens) - protect the tokens file.

Claude Desktop config

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "academia": {
      "command": "python3",
      "args": [
        "-m",
        "academia_mcp",
        "--transport",
        "stdio"
      ]
    }
  }
}

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:

docker build -t academia_mcp .

Run the server (HTTP):

docker run --rm -p 5056:5056 \
  -e PORT=5056 \
  -e OPENROUTER_API_KEY=your_key_here \
  -e WORKSPACE_DIR=/workspace \
  -v "$PWD/workdir:/workspace" \
  academia_mcp

Or use existing image: phoenix120/academia_mcp

Examples

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:

sudo apt install texlive-latex-base texlive-fonts-recommended texlive-latex-extra texlive-science latexmk