A side-by-side look at the Find Research Papers and Scholar Feed MCP MCP servers: transport, auth, tools, quality signals, and the config to install either one in Claude, Cursor, Windsurf or VS Code.
Verdict: choose Find Research Papers for research work as a local process; choose Scholar Feed MCP for research as a local process. You can also run both side by side in one mcpServers block.
search_papers, get_paper, get_research_method.SF_API_KEY.search_papers, get_paper, get_citations.Rows where the two servers differ are marked.
| Spec | ||
|---|---|---|
| Category | Research | Research |
| Quality signal | 63/100 · Good | 61/100 · Good |
| Install command | Confirmed | Confirmed |
| Transport | Local subprocess (stdio) | Local subprocess (stdio) |
| Auth | Not declared | API key required |
| Pricing | Not declared | Freemium |
| Required env vars | None listed | SF_API_KEY |
| Verified owner | Community listing | Community listing |
| GitHub stars | 6 | 12 |
| Directory activity | 2 views 0 installs 0 upvotes | 2 views 0 installs 0 upvotes |
| Tools | 7 | 27 |
| Full listing | View Find Research Papers | View Scholar Feed MCP |
search_papersSearch scholarly literature across multiple sources (arXiv, OpenAlex, Crossref, Semantic Scholar, PubMed)get_paperResolve one paper by identifier and return its metadata plus references (papers it cites) and citations (papers citing it) — works even for paywalled papersget_research_methodHouse method for using this server: tiers, rules, source quirks, and verification stepslist_sourcesList every scholarly source the server can search, with coverage, key requirements, and rate limitsskills_listList this server's skills (playbooks): guidance for interpreting results and recovering from errors. Fetch one with skill_readskill_readFetch the full content of one skill by name (see skills_list). Read 'interpreting-errors' whenever a tool returns an error or skipped sourcescheck_for_updatesCheck PyPI for newer versions of find-research-papers-mcp and get upgrade instructions.search_papersSearch Scholar Feed's 600k+ CS/AI/ML paper corpus. Semantic (embedding) search by default, so it finds conceptually related work even when the wording differs. EVERY PARAMETER DOCUMENTS ITS OWN BEHAVIOUR AND COVERAGE LIMITS — read the ones you intend to use; this description covers only what no single parameter can tell you. RETRIEVAL LIMIT: semantic ranking favours recent, stylistically-matched papers and routinely MISSES the old high-citation anchor of a field (H2O for KV eviction, GRIT for unified embedding+generation). To reach a field's canonical work, read the top-5 abstracts for repeated baseline mentions ('we compare against X') and look that name up directly, or call get_foundational_lineage. THREE UNRELATED NOTIONS OF IMPACT, easily confused: proven citations (sort='impactful', min_citations) | a ~90-day forecast percentile that is NULL on older papers and therefore excludes them (sort='trending', impact_min) | GitHub adoption (sort='community', min_stars). YOUR LIBRARY IS MARKED INLINE on authenticated calls: each hit carries is_saved and is_read, and a hit you previously annotated carries note_text — your own earlier verdict. Read note_text INSTEAD of re-deriving a conclusion from the abstract; re-judging a paper you already ruled on is the most common way an agent wastes a research session. is_saved=false is a real measurement; on anonymous calls these keys are absent entirely, so never read a missing is_saved as false. Papers new to you are ranked exactly as before — nothing is demoted for being unseen.get_paperGet full details for one or more papers by arXiv ID. Pass a single-element array for one paper; pass multiple IDs to batch-fetch up to 50 papers in one call. Pass format='bibtex' to get a .bib citation entry (bibtex is single-paper only; for multi-paper bibtex, call repeatedly). Default returns a lean 13-field shape (arxiv_id, title, authors, year, categories, has_code, github_url, citation_count, venue_name, llm_summary, llm_significance, llm_novelty_score, impact_pct — where impact_pct is the ML-forecast impact percentile 0-100 computed WITHIN the paper's own arXiv-category cohort, so it is a cohort-relative rank rather than an absolute score, and is NULL on older papers outside the recent ~90-day scoring window). Pass verbose=true for the full shape with structured extraction (method_name, contribution_type, task_category, datasets, baselines) and institution_tags. Use fields='arxiv_id,title,abstract' to select an exact subset, or fetch_fulltext with sections='all' for the full paper.get_citationsGet the citation graph for a paper, sorted by citing-paper rank_score (highest-impact first). 'citing' = outgoing references this paper cites; 'cited_by' = incoming citations from other papers. Default response is a lean 12-field shape per paper — pass verbose=true for the full 28-field shape.fetch_fulltextRead arXiv papers' actual text, by section. Section selection controls context cost: ask for the one or two you need, not whole papers — 'all' is ~13.5KB a paper, 8 of them ~108KB. Section labels are inferred: check `low_confidence_sections` before calling one the paper's own. Sourced from arXiv's section-tagged HTML, then LaTeX, then PDF; a 404 means all three failed.find_authorTwo-mode author tool. Provide exactly one of q or id. Q-MODE (q=...): search for researchers by topic or name — uses embedding similarity for topics ('efficient LLM inference'), fuzzy matching for names ('Yann LeCun'). Returns a list of matching authors with author_id, name, h_index, total_papers, primary_field, research_topics. ID-MODE (id=...): look up a single author profile by author_id (obtained from a previous q-mode call or from co_author_graph results). Returns h-index, total citations, global rank, primary field, novelty score distribution, research topics, code/venue scores, years active, and their top 10 papers by rank score.co_author_graphFind the co-authorship neighborhood of one or more authors. Given a list of author_ids, returns edges {from, to, papers_count, last_collab_year} where 'from' is one of the input authors and 'to' is any co-author appearing on a shared paper within the window. Use for AC reviewer triage (find conflicts), disambiguating researchers (who do they actually work with?), or expanding an author seed into a research community. window_years defaults to 10. Result is capped at 500 edges, sorted by papers_count DESC.embed_textEmbed a text string into a 768-dim Gemini Flash vector. Use for HyDE-style retrieval: (1) write a hypothetical short paper that would perfectly answer the user's query, (2) embed it with task_type='RETRIEVAL_DOCUMENT' (default — matches the corpus embedding side), (3) pass the resulting embedding back through search-style tools to find real papers nearest to the hypothetical. task_type='RETRIEVAL_QUERY' matches the query side and is useful for direct user-query embedding without HyDE. Pro-only — requires an SF_API_KEY on a Pro account; anonymous and free callers get a 403 pro_required. Cost: ~$0.0001/call; rate-limited at 30/minute per API key.get_field_orientationReturns CANDIDATE FOUNDATIONAL PAPERS for a research topic — cheap retrieval only, no synthesis. Ranks papers by a blend of citation count (0.6 weight, captures importance) and semantic similarity to your topic (0.4 weight). Use this to bootstrap a literature survey or get a fast sense of the landscape. For a synthesized orientation report (key concepts, open problems, reading order), use the /field-guide skill which calls this tool internally. Does not require a Pro API key — no LLM calls are made.get_foundational_lineageReturns the FOUNDATIONAL WORK FOR A PAPER'S NICHE via the citation graph — the relative question ('what is foundational for THIS paper's specific sub-field', often itself only modestly cited) rather than the obvious global landmarks. Anchors on the paper, takes its embedding neighbourhood as the niche, and ranks what the niche cites into three tiers: `niche_roots` (the niche-specific foundations, ranked by how specifically the neighbourhood builds on them — surfaces canonical anchors that semantic search misses), `field_level` (broader secondary foundations), and `discipline` (universal landmarks like Attention Is All You Need, collapsed out of the way). Each paper carries `cited_by_in_niche` evidence so the claim is grounded, not asserted. Use this to trace prior art / lineage for a paper, or to find the canonical methods a niche is built on. Complements get_field_orientation (which is topic-anchored and retrieval-only). No Pro key and no LLM calls required.save_paperSave a paper to the authenticated user's Scholar Feed library (bookmark). MUTATES the library and feeds the user's personalization — saved papers are the strongest signal in the For You feed and the email digest. Idempotent: calling it again on an already-saved paper leaves it saved. Requires SF_API_KEY. To file it into a named collection in one step, use add_to_collection (that also saves).unsave_paperRemove a paper from the authenticated user's Scholar Feed library. MUTATES the library. Idempotent: removing a paper that isn't saved leaves it unsaved. Note: the saved library is a superset of all collections, so un-saving a paper ALSO removes it from every collection it was in. To keep it filed in a collection, use remove_from_collection instead (that leaves the paper saved). Requires SF_API_KEY.like_paperLike a paper — a 'more like this' calibration signal that tunes the user's For You feed toward similar work. INSERT-only and idempotent (liking twice is a no-op, never un-likes). Distinct from save_paper: like expresses taste for ranking; save bookmarks for later reading. Requires SF_API_KEY.Paste either block (or both) into your client config, e.g. claude_desktop_config.json or ~/.cursor/mcp.json. We only show a config when the install command is confirmed.
{
"mcpServers": {
"find-research-papers": {
"command": "uvx",
"args": [
"find-research-papers-mcp"
]
}
}
}
{
"mcpServers": {
"ygao2005-scholar-feed-mcp": {
"command": "npx",
"args": [
"-y",
"scholar-feed-mcp"
],
"env": {
"SF_API_KEY": "YOUR_SF_API_KEY_HERE"
}
}
}
}