Scholar Sidekick MCP Server
MCP server for Scholar Sidekick — resolve any scholarly identifier (DOI, PMID, PMCID, ISBN, arXiv, ISSN, NASA ADS bibcode, WHO IRIS URL) into 10,000+ CSL styles or nine export formats, plus retraction, open-access, and citation-fabrication-detection checks, from any AI assistant.
Highlights
- 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.
- Retraction & open-access checks —
checkRetractionsurfaces retractions, corrections, and expressions of concern (Crossref / Retraction Watch);checkOpenAccessreturns 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. - Citation-fabrication detection —
verifyCitationcross-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) — real DOI + invented title — that simple identifier resolution cannot catch. Long-form explainer at scholar-sidekick.com/citation-integrity. - Composable workflow — chain
resolveIdentifier→formatCitation→exportCitationin 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 6 tools). See Hosted HTTP endpoint. - REST API twin — the same endpoints are available as the Scholar Sidekick REST API for non-MCP integrations.






