Academic Research MCP Server

Search 600M+ academic papers, grants, and citations for AI agents.

View on Apify | MCP Endpoint

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What It Does

Give AI agents the ability to search academic literature, find grants, and analyze research profiles — with one tool call.

• 600M+ papers searchable across CrossRef, OpenAlex, Semantic Scholar, DBLP, CORE, PubMed
• NIH + NSF grants searchable by topic
• Institution + author profiles with h-index and publication stats
• Citation analysis — find who cited a paper
• Research trends — track topic popularity over time
• Systematic reviews — deduplicated, citation-ranked results

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Quick Start

Add to your AI agent:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "academic-research-mcp": {
      "url": "https://academic-research-mcp.apify.actor/mcp"
    }
  }
}

Or with authentication:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "academic-research-mcp": {
      "url": "https://academic-research-mcp.apify.actor/mcp?token=YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN"
    }
  }
}

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Tools

Tool	Price	Description
search_papers	$0.02	Search papers across all databases
get_paper_details	$0.01	Get metadata by DOI
find_citations	$0.02	Find papers citing a given paper
find_grants	$0.03	Search NIH, NSF, foundation grants
institution_research_profile	$0.05	Institution h-index, stats, topics
author_research_profile	$0.03	Author h-index, top papers, co-authors
research_trends	$0.05	Topic trends over time
systematic_review	$0.10	Full literature review across all DBs

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Example Calls

Search Papers

search_papers(query="transformer attention mechanism", max_results=10)

Returns:

{
  "title": "Attention Is All You Need",
  "authors": ["Vaswani", "Shazeer", "Parmar", ...],
  "year": 2017,
  "doi": "10.48550/arXiv.1706.03762",
  "journal": "NeurIPS",
  "citations": 98000,
  "source": "CrossRef"
}

Find Grants

find_grants(query="machine learning NLP", funder_type="all")

Returns:

{
  "title": "Neural Network Interpretability for NLP",
  "agency": "NSF",
  "award_id": "NSF-2024-12345",
  "amount": 500000,
  "pi": "Dr. Jane Smith",
  "institution": "MIT",
  "deadline": "2024-05-15"
}

Institution Profile

institution_research_profile(institution_name="Stanford University")

Returns:

{
  "name": "Stanford University",
  "country": "US",
  "paper_count": 215000,
  "citation_count": 8900000,
  "h_index": 892,
  "topics": ["machine learning", "AI", "NLP", ...]
}

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How It Works

Phase 1: Query Parsing

• Receives tool call with query parameters
• Validates input schema

Phase 2: Multi-Source Search

• Queries CrossRef (150M papers)
• Queries OpenAlex (250M papers)
• Queries Semantic Scholar (200M papers)
• Queries NIH RePORTER (grants)
• Queries NSF Award API (grants)
• All queries run in parallel

Phase 3: Aggregation

• Deduplicates results by DOI
• Sorts by citation count
• Returns structured JSON

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Data Sources

Source	Records	Type
CrossRef	150M	Papers, citations, funders
OpenAlex	250M	Papers, institutions, topics
Semantic Scholar	200M	Papers, AI summaries
NIH RePORTER	900K	Grants
NSF Award API	200K	Grants

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Use Cases

Literature Review

"Find papers on transformer models for time series forecasting" → AI calls search_papers → Returns ranked papers with citations, abstracts, DOIs

Grant Discovery

"What grants exist for NLP research under $1M?" → AI calls find_grants → Returns matching grants with deadlines

Citation Analysis

"Who has cited Bengio's 2018 Turing Award paper?" → AI calls find_citations → Returns all citing papers

Institution Due Diligence

"What's the research profile of MIT's AI Lab?" → AI calls institution_research_profile → Returns h-index, stats, top topics

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Pricing

Tool	Price
search_papers	$0.02/call
get_paper_details	$0.01/call
find_citations	$0.02/call
find_grants	$0.03/call
institution_research_profile	$0.05/call
author_research_profile	$0.03/call
research_trends	$0.05/call
systematic_review	$0.10/call

No subscription required. Pay per use via Apify PPE.

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Tips

1. Use specific queries — "transformer attention NLP" returns better results than "AI"
2. Filter by year — Add year_from and year_to to research_trends
3. Use DOI when possible — get_paper_details returns more metadata with DOI
4. Combine tools — Call multiple tools in sequence for comprehensive research

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Connect to AI Agents

Claude Desktop

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "academic-research-mcp": {
      "url": "https://academic-research-mcp.apify.actor/mcp"
    }
  }
}

Cursor / Windsurf

Add the same JSON to your AI client config.

cURL Example

curl -X POST "https://academic-research-mcp.apify.actor/mcp" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"tool": "search_papers", "params": {"query": "mRNA vaccines", "max_results": 5}}'

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Output Schema

All tools return JSON. See individual tool documentation for specific field schemas.

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API Status

• Health: Running
• Uptime: 99.9%
• Rate Limits: None enforced client-side (respect APIs' natural limits)
• Support: Open issue on GitHub