MCP Refchecker

A lightweight MCP server that wraps academic-refchecker, letting Claude verify academic citations against Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, and CrossRef in real time

An MCP server that lets Claude verify academic citations in real time againstSemantic Scholar,OpenAlex, andCrossref— catching hallucinated or incorrect references before they end up in your work.

Built on top ofacademic-refchecker(MIT).

{ "verified": true, "url": "https://...", "matched_paper": { "title": "...", "authors": [...], "year": 2023, "venue": "..." }, "possible_match": null, "errors": null, "warnings": null, "info": null }

- verified—trueif the paper was found and all provided metadata (year, authors, venue) matches.falseif there is a real metadata conflict or the paper could not be found.
- matched_paper— the authoritative metadata from the verification source.
- possible_match— a Crossref fallback match when the exact title was not found but a close variant was (see "Fuzzy fallback" below).
- errors— hard errors that block verification (wrong year, wrong authors, paper not found).
- warnings— soft warnings that don't block verification (arXiv v1 vs v2 differences, arXiv preprint vs published venue, incomplete input metadata).
- info— informational suggestions (e.g., "reference could include arXiv URL").

academic-refcheckerreturns a flat list of issues with some inconsistency (year mismatches get marked as warnings while author mismatches get marked as errors). This wrapper normalises the output:

- Promoted to hard errors:plainyear/author/venuemismatches where the cited metadata actually differs from reality. These blockverified.
- Demoted to warnings:"missing field" errors when the paper was found but the user didn't provide that field in the first place. Missing input metadata is not evidence of a hallucinated citation.
- Kept as warnings:arXiv version differences (v1 vs v2), preprint-vs-published venue notes.

Whenacademic-refcheckerreports that a paper could not be verified, this wrapper makes a secondary query toCrossrefusing fuzzy title matching andfuzzywuzzy.ratio. If a candidate with ≥ 85% similarity is found, it's returned aspossible_matchwith a warning.

If you haveuvinstalled, no separate installation is needed. Add directly to yourclaude_desktop_config.json:

{ "mcpServers": { "refchecker": { "command": "uvx", "args": ["mcp-refchecker"] } } }

uvxdownloads and runs the package in an isolated environment automatically. Restart Claude Desktop after saving the config.

Then add toclaude_desktop_config.json:

{ "mcpServers": { "refchecker": { "command": "mcp-refchecker" } } }

git clone https://github.com/JonasBaath/mcp-refchecker cd mcp-refchecker pip install .

- SEMANTIC_SCHOLAR_API_KEY—apply for one herefor higher rate limits on refchecker's primary verification path.
- CROSSREF_MAILTO— your contact email, used to opt into Crossref'spolite poolfor more reliable fuzzy fallback access.
- MCP_REFCHECKER_DEBUG— set to any non-empty value to print debug logging from the fuzzy fallback path to stderr.

{ "mcpServers": { "refchecker": { "command": "uvx", "args": ["mcp-refchecker"], "env": { "SEMANTIC_SCHOLAR_API_KEY": "your-key-here", "CROSSREF_MAILTO": "you@example.com" } } } }

MIT — © Jonas Bååth. Built onacademic-refchecker(MIT).

Access and manage your Zotero library data via the local or web API.