Unpaywall

Overview

Unpaywall is an MCP server that provides open-access availability data for over 120 million scholarly articles through the Unpaywall API. It integrates directly into AI assistants as an MCP tool, allowing language models to query and retrieve information about article accessibility on your behalf.

The server runs locally as a Python package installed via uvx unpaywall-mcp-server. It communicates with your MCP client over stdio and requires the UNPAYWALL_EMAIL environment variable for configuration. The latest release is v1.0.1, distributed under the MIT license with source code available at SMABoundless/unpaywall-mcp-server on GitHub.

Unpaywall is categorized as Development on mcp.site and works with MCP clients including Claude Desktop, Claude Code, Cursor, VS Code, Windsurf, and Zed. If you maintain this server, you can claim this listing to verify ownership and keep information up to date.

Installation

// claude_desktop_config.json
{
  "mcpServers": {
    "unpaywall": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": [
        "unpaywall-mcp-server"
      ],
      "env": {
        "UNPAYWALL_EMAIL": "<unpaywall-email>"
      }
    }
  }
}

Requires UNPAYWALL_EMAIL