Claude Code Plugin¶

Install Scholar MCP as a Claude Code plugin for automatic tool and skill availability in every session.

Prerequisites¶

uv installed. The plugin launches the server via uvx, which ships with uv.

Install¶

/plugin marketplace add pvliesdonk/claude-plugins
/plugin install scholar-mcp@pvliesdonk

Configure¶

The only recommended configuration is a Semantic Scholar API key. The server works without one, but unauthenticated requests are limited to ~1 req/s and will hit 429 throttles during multi-step operations. Request a free key to get ~10 req/s.

Add to your shell profile:

macOS / LinuxWindows PowerShell

echo 'export SCHOLAR_MCP_S2_API_KEY=your-key' >> ~/.zshrc

[Environment]::SetEnvironmentVariable(
    "SCHOLAR_MCP_S2_API_KEY",
    "your-key",
    "User")

Optional environment variables¶

Variable	Default	Purpose
`SCHOLAR_MCP_READ_ONLY`	`true`	Hide write tools (PDF download/conversion).
`SCHOLAR_MCP_CONTACT_EMAIL`	--	OpenAlex polite pool + Unpaywall PDF lookups.
`SCHOLAR_MCP_CACHE_DIR`	`/data/scholar-mcp`	SQLite cache and PDF storage. Set a writable local path (e.g. `~/Documents/scholar-mcp`) — the default is for Docker.
`SCHOLAR_MCP_DOCLING_URL`	--	docling-serve URL for PDF-to-Markdown.
`SCHOLAR_MCP_VLM_API_URL`	--	OpenAI-compatible VLM endpoint for formula/figure enrichment.
`SCHOLAR_MCP_VLM_API_KEY`	--	API key for the VLM endpoint.
`SCHOLAR_MCP_VLM_MODEL`	`gpt-4o`	Model name for VLM-enriched conversion.
`SCHOLAR_MCP_EPO_CONSUMER_KEY`	--	EPO OPS key (enables patent tools).
`SCHOLAR_MCP_EPO_CONSUMER_SECRET`	--	EPO OPS secret.
`FASTMCP_LOG_LEVEL`	`INFO`	`DEBUG` / `INFO` / `WARNING` / `ERROR`.

For the full list, see Configuration.

What you get¶

27 tools across four scholarly source domains:

Papers -- search, lookup, author search, citations, references, BFS graph traversal, bridge papers, recommendations, BibTeX/CSL-JSON/RIS generation, OpenAlex enrichment.
Patents -- search 100+ offices via EPO OPS, full patent sections, family/legal/citations, NPL-to-paper resolution.
Books -- search, ISBN/OLID lookup, subject recommendations via Open Library.
Standards -- identifier resolution, search, and metadata for NIST, IETF, W3C, ETSI, plus Tier 2 ISO and IEC via local Relaton sync (sync-standards).
PDF conversion -- download and convert to Markdown via docling-serve, with optional VLM enrichment for formulas and figures.

Update¶

/plugin update scholar-mcp@pvliesdonk

Uninstall¶

/plugin uninstall scholar-mcp@pvliesdonk