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):

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"
      ]
    }
  }
}