Paper Search

Search, download, and read academic papers via the paper-search CLI.

CLI Usage

All commands run via:

paper-search <command> [args]

If paper-search is not available, install it with uv tool install paper-search-mcp. Optional API keys can be configured in ~/.config/paper-search-mcp/.env.

Search

paper-search search "<query>" -n <max_per_source> -s <sources> -y <year>

• -n: results per source (default: 5)
• -s: comma-separated sources or "all" (default: all)
• -y: year filter for Semantic Scholar (e.g. "2020", "2018-2022")

For speed, prefer targeted sources (-s arxiv,semantic,crossref) over "all" unless broad coverage is needed.

Download PDF

paper-search download <source> <paper_id> [-o ./downloads]

Read (extract text)

paper-search read <source> <paper_id> [-o ./downloads]

List sources

paper-search sources

Output

search and download return JSON. read returns plain text. Config warnings go to stderr and can be ignored.

Sources

arxiv, pubmed, biorxiv, medrxiv, google_scholar, iacr, semantic, crossref, openalex, pmc, core, europepmc, dblp, openaire, citeseerx, doaj, base, zenodo, hal, ssrn, unpaywall

Optional (env vars): ieee (IEEEAPIKEY), acm (ACMAPIKEY)

Workflow

1. Search with targeted sources to find papers
2. Present results as a table: title, authors, year, source, DOI/URL
3. If the user wants full text, use read <source> <paper_id>
4. If the user wants the PDF, use download <source> <paper_id> and report the saved path