Crossref

The Crossref MCP Server provides an interface to search and retrieve metadata from Crossref through the Model Context Protocol (MCP). It exposes tools to search scholarly works by query, fetch detailed metadata for a specific work using its DOI, and discover journals and funders within the Crossref database. This enables AI assistants to directly query Crossref for paper information, metadata, and related entities in a structured, programmatic way. To use it, run the server and configure your MCP client to point at the crossref MCP server under the name you choose (e.g., crossref). The available tools include search_works_by_query, get_work_metadata, search_journals, and search_funders, which you can invoke via natural language prompts or explicit tool calls supported by your MCP-enabled assistant.

Prerequisites:

• Python 3.10+ (recommended)
• Internet access to fetch dependencies

Installation steps:

1. Clone the repository:

git clone https://github.com/JackKuo666/Crossref-MCP-Server.git
cd Crossref-MCP-Server

2. Install required dependencies:

pip install -r requirements.txt

3. Run the MCP server:

python crossref_server.py

4. Optional: configure your MCP client with the server name (e.g., crossref) and the command/args as shown in the mcp_config section.

Notes and tips:

• The Crossref server uses the public Crossref API. For higher rate limits, consider adding an email address when initializing CrossrefSearch to help Crossref identify your client, as suggested in the repository notes.
• If you need to customize how metadata is retrieved or fields returned, modify crossref_search.py and crossref_server.py as needed.
• Ensure Python 3.10+ compatibility and that required dependencies (FastMCP, requests, bs4, habanero) are installed.
• When integrating with Claude Desktop or other MCP clients, use the provided mcpServers configuration snippet to register the crossref server.
• If you run into issues, check that your network can access Crossref endpoints and that the server process has permissions to bind and run.