Academia MCP

🚀 Academia MCP

A MCP server equipped with tools for searching, fetching, analyzing, and reporting on scientific papers and datasets.

✨ Features

• Conduct searches and downloads on ArXiv.
• Search the ACL Anthology.
• Search for Hugging Face datasets.
• Obtain citations and references from Semantic Scholar.
• Perform web searches via Exa, Brave, or Tavily.
• Crawl web pages, compile LaTeX, and read PDFs.
• Optionally utilize LLM-powered tools for document QA and research proposal workflows.

📦 Installation

Requirements

• Python 3.12+

Installation Methods

• For End Users (Using pip):

pip3 install academia-mcp

• For Development (uv + Makefile):

uv venv .venv
make install

🚀 Quick Start

Running the Server

• 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: Available transports are stdio, sse, streamable-http.
• Host and Port: host/port are used for HTTP transports and ignored for stdio. The default port is 5056 (or PORT).

💻 Claude Desktop Config

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

💻 Usage Examples

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.

📚 Documentation

Environment Variables

Set these as needed, depending on which tools you use:

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

• 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:

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