Scopus Plus MCP
Scopus and more: search, full text, citation networks, journal quality, bibliometrics.
Runs on your machine from its package; the steps are below.
What it does
- Reads
- Writes
- High impact
Not assessed yet.
What it costs
FreeOdel charges nothing per call. The publisher may charge for its own service.
Runs locally over stdio
This server isn't hosted — your MCP client launches it from a package registry. Use one of the commands below, or drop the config into your client (e.g. Claude Desktop).
Run
uvx scopus-plus-mcp
MCP client config
{
"mcpServers": {
"scopus-plus-mcp": {
"command": "uvx",
"args": [
"scopus-plus-mcp"
]
}
}
}The Scopus MCP server that goes further: search, full text, citation networks, journal quality and bibliometrics, for Claude and other AI assistants.
Search the literature, trace who cites whom across generations, map research fronts and intellectual bases, and pull the counts, metrics and bibliography you need, from a conversation. It is an MCP server, so any MCP client can use it: Claude Desktop, Claude Code, Cursor.
- 🕸️ Citation networks. Bibliographic coupling, co-citation, multi-generation citation lineages, and the citation network within any set of papers, with SPC/SPLC/SPNP main paths and key routes, RPYS and a historiograph, exported for Pajek, VOSviewer or Gephi.
- 🧾 Audited, not just built. Citer sets verified across search strategies, reference lists checked against Crossref for gaps, and the sentences behind each citation, with their intent, from Semantic Scholar.
- 🔀 Two data sources. Scopus by default; add
source="openalex"to run the same analyses without a Scopus subscription. - 📊 Bibliometrics. Where a topic is published and in which quartile per field; journals above a percentile cut-off in chosen categories; publications per year; journal metrics; BibTeX for any list of papers.
- 🔎 Full-text search. Find Elsevier papers that use a term in their body, and see how often and where each one uses it.
- 🩺 Honest about access. One call tells you which tools your current Scopus access supports, and why the rest fail.
- ✅ Tested. 510 test functions, CI on Linux, macOS and Windows, and a live check of every tool against the real APIs.
How it compares with the other Scopus MCP servers and with bibliometrics packages (bibliometrix, pybliometrics, VOSviewer, Pajek, ...): comparison.
Ask things like
Map the research front around these six papers on organizing visions.
Trace two generations of work citing Swanson & Ramiller (1997) and show me the main path.
Build the citation network of every Basket of Eight paper citing the organizing-vision papers, and show how the main path cites its predecessors.
How has publishing on "digital transformation" grown since 2010?
Get SJR and CiteScore for the Basket of Eight, and BibTeX for the papers we just found.
Tools
| Search and records | search_scopus · search_all · search_fulltext · get_abstract_details · resolve_identifier · search_authors · get_author_profile · get_fulltext |
| Citations | get_references · get_citing_papers |
| Networks | bibliographic_coupling · co_citation · citation_lineage · citation_network · historiograph · rpys · research_fronts |
| Audit | resolve_citers · citation_context · path_transmission · coding_agreement · index_coverage · check_retractions |
| Bibliometrics | publication_counts · topic_landscape · thematic_evolution · get_journal_metrics · find_journals · get_bibtex · import_records |
| Diagnostics and jobs | diagnose_connection · get_quota_status · get_server_info · job_status · job_result |
Parameters and details for each: tool reference.
Install
You need an API key from the Elsevier Developer Portal (register with your institutional email). OpenAlex needs no key.
Claude Desktop — one click:
- Download
scopus-plus-mcp-<version>.mcpbfrom the latest release. - Open it (or drag it into Settings → Extensions), click Install, and paste your API key when asked. Claude stores it securely.
Claude Code — two commands:
claude plugin marketplace add michalhron/scopus-plus-mcp
claude plugin install scopus-plus-mcp@michalhron
Then make your key available, either in your shell
(export SCOPUS_API_KEY=...) or, better, in the
OS secret store.
Any other MCP client (needs uv):
{
"mcpServers": {
"scopus-plus": {
"command": "uvx",
"args": ["scopus-plus-mcp"],
"env": { "SCOPUS_API_KEY": "YOUR_KEY" }
}
}
}
Then ask your assistant to run diagnose_connection: it checks your key and
tells you which tools your Scopus access supports.
The Claude Code plugin also installs the main-path skill, which walks Claude through a main path analysis from a query to a drawn map. For Claude Desktop, zip its folder and upload it as a skill.
Documentation
| Tool reference | Every tool and parameter, generated from the code |
| Data sources | Scopus vs OpenAlex: when to use which, measured coverage |
| Configuration | All settings; keeping keys in the OS secret store |
| Access and troubleshooting | Off-campus access, tokens, proxies, reading diagnose_connection |
| Comparison | This project vs the other Scopus MCP servers, and vs bibliometrics packages |
| Development | Tests, live smoke tests, releases |
| Prompt examples · Changelog · Roadmap |
Origins
Formerly citation-network-mcp (and before that michalhron/scopus-mcp). This project began as a fork of
qwe4559999/scopus-mcp by
thinktraveller and
qwe4559999, which provides Scopus search,
abstracts, author profiles and citing papers. Everything since version 0.2
was developed here by Michal Hron. MIT
licensed; see LICENSE.
Scopus and ScienceDirect are trademarks of Elsevier B.V. This project is independent and not affiliated with or endorsed by Elsevier; it uses their public APIs with your own key and subscription.
