mlava/scholar-sidekick-mcp

MCP server for Scholar Sidekick — catch AI-fabricated citations, one at a time or across a whole bibliography, from any AI assistant. It also checks retraction and open-access status, and resolves any scholarly identifier (DOI, PMID, PMCID, ISBN, arXiv, ISSN, NASA ADS bibcode, WHO IRIS URL) into 10,000+ CSL styles or nine export formats.
Highlights
- **Citation-fabrication detection** — verifyCitation cross-checks a claimed citation against the resolved record at its identifier, detecting the dominant AI-driven fabrication pattern documented by Topaz et al. (Lancet 2026)00603-3) — real DOI + invented title — that simple identifier resolution cannot catch. Long-form explainer at scholar-sidekick.com/citation-integrity.
- **Whole-bibliography audit** — auditBibliography runs that same check plus a retraction lookup across an entire reference list in one call, taking raw BibTeX, RIS, or CSL JSON and returning a per-entry verdict table with a corpus summary.
- **Retraction & open-access checks** — checkRetraction surfaces retractions, corrections, and expressions of concern (Crossref / Retraction Watch); checkOpenAccess returns OA status and the best legal landing or PDF URL (Unpaywall). Both accept any identifier type and resolve it to a DOI under the hood.
- **Eight identifier types out of the box** — DOIs, PMIDs, PMCIDs, ISBNs, arXiv IDs, ISSNs, NASA ADS bibcodes, and WHO IRIS URLs (rare in citation tooling).
- **Batch-friendly resolve / format / export** — each accepts a single identifier or a comma- or newline-separated list; the server normalises the list and resolves them in one round trip.
- **10,000+ citation styles** — five hand-tuned builtins (Vancouver, AMA, APA, IEEE, CSE) plus any CSL style ID, with alias and dependent-style resolution.
- **Nine export formats** — BibTeX, RIS, CSL JSON, EndNote (XML/Refer), RefWorks, MEDLINE, Zotero RDF, CSV, plain text.
- **Composable workflow** — chain resolveIdentifier → formatCitation → exportCitation in one prompt for an end-to-end "raw IDs → exportable bibliography" pipeline.
- **Provenance metadata on every response** — formatted output is followed by a metadata block (requestId, formatter, styleUsed, warnings) so the assistant can show users *which* engine produced each citation.
- **No key required** — works anonymously against the public Scholar Sidekick API (rate-limited free tier); add a free first-party ssk_ key for higher limits, or a RapidAPI key for paid/managed tiers.
- **Hosted HTTP endpoint (no install)** — prefer not to run a local stdio server? Connect any HTTP-capable MCP client straight to https://scholar-sidekick.com/api/mcp (Streamable HTTP, same 7 tools). See Hosted HTTP endpoint.
- **REST API twin** — the same endpoints are available as the Scholar Sidekick REST API for non-MCP integrations.
Tools
| Tool | Description |
| --- | --- |
| **verifyCitation** | Verify a claimed citation against the resolved record at its identifier. Detects the Topaz et al. (Lancet 2026) fabrication pattern — real DOI + invented title — that resolveIdentifier alone cannot catch. Returns one of four verdicts (matched / mismatch / ambiguous / not_found) plus per-field similarity scores and the resolved record so the user can see where the cited title and the actual paper diverged. Optional Stage 3 LLM screen rescues informal-abbreviation false positives (paid plans / first-party authentication only). One citation per call. |
| **auditBibliography** | Run the verifyCitation check plus a retraction lookup across a *whole* bibliography in one call. Accepts raw BibTeX, RIS, or CSL-JSON text, or a pre-parsed claims[] array; returns a per-entry verdict table and a corpus summary. Capped at 25 entries per call. |
| **resolveIdentifier** | Resolve DOIs, PMIDs, PMCIDs, ISBNs, arXiv IDs, ISSNs, ADS bibcodes, and WHO IRIS URLs to structured bibliographic metadata (CSL JSON). Accepts a single identifier or a comma/newline-separated batch. |