Scite MCP Server

Scite MCP is the official remote MCP server from Scite (Research Solutions) that connects AI assistants like Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, and Copilot to Scite's database of scientific literature and Smart Citations. It exposes full-text search across roughly 280M articles, book chapters, preprints, and datasets, enriched with more than 1.6 billion citation statements that are classified by Scite's models as supporting, contrasting, or mentioning the claims they reference.

The server is designed to ground AI answers in peer-reviewed science. When an agent retrieves a paper through Scite, it gets metadata, abstract, full-text excerpts (when open access), citation counts, editorial notices such as retractions or expressions of concern, and the actual sentences from other papers that cite the work. An access resolver also returns links to read the paper through institutional LibKey or GetFTR entitlements, or via Article Galaxy when not otherwise available.

Scite MCP is provider-hosted at https://api.scite.ai/mcp and works with any MCP-compatible client. A Scite Premium subscription (with a 7-day free trial) is required for production use; institutions on Premium or Enterprise plans get MCP access bundled with their existing subscription. Authentication is handled through OAuth via the user's Scite account.

Tools

Prerequisites

• A Scite account with a Premium or Enterprise subscription (a 7-day free trial is available at scite.ai)
• An MCP-compatible client (Claude.ai, Claude Desktop, Claude Code, ChatGPT, Gemini CLI, Copilot Studio, Cursor, VS Code, etc.)

Server URL

https://api.scite.ai/mcp

Claude Desktop / Claude Code

Add the remote MCP server to your config:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "scite": {
      "url": "https://api.scite.ai/mcp"
    }
  }
}

On first use, Claude will prompt you to sign in with your Scite account via OAuth.

Claude.ai

Open Settings, Connectors, Add custom connector, and enter https://api.scite.ai/mcp. Authenticate with your Scite account when prompted.

ChatGPT

Open the Scite connector in ChatGPT from the connector directory, sign in with your Scite account, then type @Scite in prompts to activate it. ChatGPT may silently disconnect tools between sessions; reconnect from the conversation menu if needed.

Optional: Scite Research Assistant Skill for Claude

Scite publishes a Claude Skill that adds guidance on how to interpret Smart Citations. See github.com/scitedotai/scite-mcp-skill.

• Literature reviews grounded in citation evidence: Find peer-reviewed papers on a topic, filtered by year, journal, or minimum supporting/contrasting citations, and summarize the state of evidence.
• Fact-checking scientific claims: Verify a claim by retrieving citing statements classified as supporting or contrasting, instead of relying on the LLM's training data.
• Detecting retractions and corrections: Check a DOI or reference list for editorial notices such as retractions or expressions of concern before citing them.
• Finding controversy in a field: Surface papers with high contrasting-citation counts to identify disputed findings and ongoing debates.
• Institutional access routing: Retrieve papers and get LibKey/GetFTR access links so researchers can read full text through their library entitlements.

• "Find recent journal articles on CRISPR base editing in human trials, sorted by date, with at least 10 supporting citations."
• "Check DOI 10.1038/s41586-020-2649-2 for any retractions, corrections, or expressions of concern, and show how it is cited."
• "Search Scite for papers contrasting the amyloid hypothesis of Alzheimer's published since 2022 and summarize the contrasting citation statements."
• "Pull all papers by author 'Karikó' on mRNA vaccines, ordered by relevance, and list supporting versus contrasting citation counts."
• "Find the top 5 most-cited reviews on GLP-1 agonists and weight loss, and give me institutional access links."

• Official, provider-hosted MCP server maintained by Scite (Research Solutions), no self-hosting required.
• Smart Citations go beyond keyword search by classifying every citation as supporting, contrasting, or mentioning, which reduces hallucinated or misused references.
• Broad coverage: ~280M articles, preprints, and chapters with 1.6B+ citation statements, including editorial notices like retractions.
• Built-in access resolution via LibKey, GetFTR, and Article Galaxy for institutional and pay-per-view delivery.

• Requires a paid Scite Premium or Enterprise subscription after the 7-day trial; not usable long term on a free account.
• Exposes effectively a single search_literature tool, so workflows that need separate endpoints (e.g., dedicated citation-graph traversal or author profile APIs) must be composed from filters on that one tool.
• Full text is only returned for open access papers; for paywalled content the agent receives metadata, citation context, and access links rather than full content.

• OpenAlex MCP servers: Community MCP wrappers around the free OpenAlex API for scholarly metadata and citation graphs.
• PubMed MCP servers: Community servers exposing NCBI E-utilities for biomedical literature search.
• Semantic Scholar MCP servers: Community servers built on the Semantic Scholar API for paper search, citations, and TLDRs.