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Best MCP servers for academic papers

We found 177 MCP servers for academic papers in the catalog; these are the 15 that rank highest. The order comes from our rank, which weighs adoption, freshness, documentation and publisher identity. Nobody can pay for a place on this list. Zotero MCP, CLIO Arxiv and ArXiv MCP Server lead it. PraisonAI has the most GitHub stars here (9,288). 13 of the 15 had activity in the last 30 days. Remote servers need no local install; local ones run on your machine and can reach local files. Each entry lists why it made the list and links to its install page.

Updated Oct 26, 2026 · Built from catalog data; how we rank and grade

Top 15 of 177

  1. 1
    Zotero MCP

    54yyyu

    Search, read, annotate, and add to your Zotero research library, local or web.

    • 5.5K GitHub stars
    • Active in the last 30 days
    • Open source (MIT)

    ★ 5.5K↓ 7.1K/wkLast active Oct 16, 2026Local (stdio)Claude Code, Codex, VS Code, Cursor +2

  2. 2
    CLIO Arxiv

    iowarp

    Search arXiv by topic, author, title or date, read paper details, and export BibTeX or PDFs.

    • Active in the last 30 days
    • Open source (BSD-3-Clause)

    ★ 30↓ 7.3K/wkLast active Oct 8, 2026Local (stdio)Claude Code, Codex, VS Code, Cursor +2

  3. 3
    ArXiv MCP Server

    blazickjp

    Search arXiv papers, download full text, semantic search, citation graphs, and alerts.

    • 3.2K GitHub stars
    • Most weekly downloads here (16.4K)
    • Active in the last 30 days

    ★ 3.2K↓ 16.4K/wkLast active Oct 8, 2026Local (stdio)Claude Code, Codex, VS Code, Cursor +2

  4. 4
    Zotero MCP

    kujenga

    Search your Zotero library, retrieve item metadata, and read full text from AI assistants.

    • Open source (MIT)

    ★ 162↓ 1.2K/wkLast active Aug 7, 2026Local (stdio)Claude Code, Codex, VS Code, Cursor +2

  5. 5
    PraisonAI

    MervinPraison

    AI Agents Framework with Self Reflection and MCP support

    • Most GitHub stars here (9,288)
    • Active in the last 30 days
    • Open source (MIT)

    ★ 9.3K↓ 2.5K/wkLast active Oct 24, 2026Local (stdio)Claude Code, Codex, VS Code, Cursor +2

  6. 6
    DocsAgent — Zotero, Obsidian & Apple Notes MCP Server

    docsagent

    Instant, private access to your knowledge base: Zotero, Obsidian, Apple Notes (macOS).

    • Active in the last 30 days

    ★ 578↓ 46/wkLast active Sep 28, 2026Local (stdio)Claude Code, Codex, VS Code, Cursor +2

  7. 7
    Zoteus

    oscardvs

    Zotero MCP server for Claude and ChatGPT: search, citations, safe writes, PDF passages and pages.

    • Runs locally or as a remote server
    • Active in the last 30 days
    • Open source (MIT)

    ★ 62↓ 275/wkLast active Oct 19, 2026Local (stdio), Remote (HTTP)Claude Code, VS Code, Codex, Cursor +2

  8. 8
    PubMed Search

    u9401066

    Multi-source biomedical literature search: PubMed, Europe PMC, OpenAlex, full text, citations

    • Active in the last 30 days
    • Open source (Apache-2.0)

    ★ 28↓ 494/wkLast active Oct 20, 2026Local (stdio)Claude Code, Codex, VS Code, Cursor +2

  9. 9
    Semantic Scholar MCP Server

    smaniches

    MCP server for the Semantic Scholar API: search 200M+ papers, citations, authors, recommendations.

    • Active in the last 30 days
    • Open source (MIT)

    ★ 23↓ 1.3K/wkLast active Oct 23, 2026Local (stdio)Claude Code, Codex, VS Code, Cursor +2

  10. 10
    Bibverify

    Hylouis233

    Verify and repair BibTeX references with DOI-first MCP tools.

    • Active in the last 30 days
    • Open source (MIT)

    ★ 98↓ 106/wkLast active Oct 17, 2026Local (stdio)Claude Code, Codex, VS Code, Cursor +2

  11. 11
    Research Hub

    WenyuChiou

    Research workspace for Zotero + Obsidian + NotebookLM.

    • Active in the last 30 days
    • Open source (MIT)

    ★ 66↓ 144/wkLast active Oct 23, 2026Local (stdio)Claude Code, Codex, VS Code, Cursor +2

  12. 12
    Pubcrawl

    nickjlamb

    PubMed & Europe PMC literature search, US/UK drug labelling, and clinical trials for AI assistants.

    • Active in the last 30 days
    • Open source (MIT)

    ★ 15Last active Oct 16, 2026Local (stdio)Claude Code, Codex, VS Code, Cursor +2

  13. 13
    SciX / NASA ADS

    yipihey

    Search the astronomy and physics literature (SciX / NASA ADS): papers, citations, metrics, BibTeX.

    • Active in the last 30 days
    • Open source (MIT)

    ★ 2↓ 324/wkLast active Oct 22, 2026Local (stdio)Claude Code, Codex, VS Code, Claude Desktop +2

  14. 14
    Find Research Papers

    surendranb

    Search open-source research papers across arXiv, OpenAlex, Crossref, PubMed, Semantic Scholar.

    • Active in the last 30 days
    • Open source (MIT)

    ★ 6Last active Oct 3, 2026Local (stdio)Claude Code, Codex, VS Code, Cursor +2

  15. 15
    Patsnap Patent & Literature Search

    patsnap

    Search 200M+ patents and 216M+ scientific papers using natural language and structured filters.

    • Remote server, no local install
    • Open source (Apache-2.0)

    ★ 84Last active Aug 6, 2026Remote (HTTP)Claude Code, VS Code, Cursor, Windsurf

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