Academic Hub

A unified MCP (Model Context Protocol) server for searching and downloading academic papers and ebooks from 10+ sources.

Sources

Papers

• OpenAlex - Open scholarly metadata
• ArXiv - Preprints
• Unpaywall - Legal Open Access PDFs
• CORE - Library Open Access
• Sci-Hub - Fallback

Books

• Anna's Archive
• Z-Library (mirror)
• OceanofPDF
• PDF Drive
• ManyBooks (public domain)
• BDeBooks
• DigiLibraries
• Smashwords

Installation

git clone https://github.com/bockybocky/mcp-academic-hub.git
cd mcp-academic-hub
pip install -r requirements.txt

Configuration

Set environment variables (optional):

export UNPAYWALL_EMAIL="[email protected]"  # For Unpaywall API
export CORE_API_KEY="your-core-api-key"           # For CORE API (free at https://core.ac.uk)
export DOWNLOAD_DIR="/path/to/downloads"          # Default download directory

Usage with Claude Code

Add to your Claude Code MCP settings (~/.claude/settings.json):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "academic-hub": {
      "type": "stdio",
      "command": "uv",
      "args": ["run", "server.py"],
      "cwd": "/path/to/mcp-academic-hub"
    }
  }
}

Usage with Gemini CLI

Add to your Gemini MCP settings:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "academic-hub": {
      "command": "uv",
      "args": ["run", "server.py"],
      "cwd": "/path/to/mcp-academic-hub"
    }
  }
}

Available Tools

Search Tools

Tool	Description
search_papers	Search OpenAlex + ArXiv
search_ocean_of_pdf	Search OceanofPDF
search_pdf_drive	Search PDF Drive
search_manybooks	Search ManyBooks (free/public domain)
search_bdebooks	Search BDeBooks
search_digilibraries	Search DigiLibraries
search_smashwords	Search Smashwords
search_zlibrary_to	Search Z-Library mirror
search_annas_archive	Search Anna's Archive

Download/Link Extraction Tools

Tool	Description
get_pdf_links	Find PDF links for a DOI (Unpaywall + CORE + Sci-Hub)
download_paper	Download a PDF from a direct URL
get_ocean_of_pdf_links	Extract download links from OceanofPDF
get_pdf_drive_links	Extract PDF links from PDF Drive
get_digilibraries_links	Extract download links from DigiLibraries
get_zlibrary_to_links	Extract download links from Z-Library
get_smashwords_links	Extract Smashwords book info

Requirements

• Python >= 3.10
• uv (recommended) or pip

License

MIT