Search & Citation MCP

Academic search and IEEE citation engine as an MCP (Model Context Protocol) server. Designed to integrate with coding assistants like opencode.

9 tools that allow an LLM to search papers, validate metadata, generate BibTeX citations, download open-access PDFs, and maintain a biblatex-ieee compatible bibliography.

Install

git clone https://github.com/isaacwars/search-citation-mcp.git
cd search-citation-mcp
python3 -m venv .venv
source .venv/bin/activate
pip install -e .

Configuration

Copy .env.example to .env and set optional keys:

cp .env.example .env

| Variable | Required | Description | |---|---|---| | OPENALEX_API_KEY | No | Improves OpenAlex rate limit | | SEMANTIC_SCHOLAR_API_KEY | No | Enables Semantic Scholar semantic search | | UNPAYWALL_EMAIL | No | Unpaywall API for PDF downloads | | BIBLIOGRAPHY_PATH | No | Path to .bib file (default: ./bibliografia.bib) | | EZPROXY_HOST | No | Institutional EZProxy host | | SCIHUB_ENABLED | No | Sci-Hub as last-resort fallback (1 to enable) |

MCP Usage

Add to opencode.json:

{
  "mcp": {
    "search-citation": {
      "command": "/path/to/search-citation-mcp/.venv/bin/search-citation-mcp",
      "env": {
        "BIBLIOGRAPHY_PATH": "./bibliografia.bib"
      }
    }
  }
}

MCP Tools

| Tool | Description | |---|---| | search_papers | Search papers via OpenAlex + Semantic Scholar | | add_from_doi | Add citation by DOI with Crossref → S2 → OA validation | | cite_paper | Generate .bib entry without writing to file | | add_to_bibliography | Add manual entry to .bib (CFE, NOM, IEC, thesis, datasheets) | | find_related_papers | Find related papers via citation graph + semantic similarity | | detect_input | Detect whether text is a DOI, arXiv, PMID, ISBN, or URL | | list_cached | List recent cached searches | | fix_bib | Fix Title Case, protect acronyms ({IEEE}, {CFE}) | | download_paper | Download PDF from free sources (OA → S2 → Unpaywall → arXiv) |

CLI Usage

search-citation search "photovoltaic harmonics" -n 5
search-citation add --doi 10.1016/j.rser.2015.08.042
search-citation cite --doi 10.1016/j.rser.2015.08.042
search-citation related 10.1016/j.rser.2015.08.042 -n 5
search-citation detect "10.1016/j.rser.2015.08.042"
search-citation fix-bib bibliografia.bib --dry-run
search-citation download 10.1016/j.rser.2015.08.042 -o ./pdfs
search-citation cache

Supported BibTeX Entry Types

article · inproceedings · book · techreport · mastersthesis · phdthesis · manual · misc · online · incollection

Validated against IEEE schema with required and optional fields per type.

Tests

pytest tests/ -v

123 unit tests covering acronym protection, BibTeX validation, input detection, .bib generation, path safety, caching, and key collision resolution.

Security

stdio transport — no TCP port, no network exposure
Path traversal blocked on all file operations
Credentials via environment variables only, never hardcoded
Zero personal data in source code
PDF and .bib output confined to project workspace

License

APACHE 2.0

MCP Servers