# Paper Finder

Find research papers and abstracts, with a free full-text link when one exists. It is free, with no sign-up and no key.

## What it does

Find research papers on a topic, search arXiv preprints, and get a paper's abstract and free full-text link from its DOI, PubMed id or arXiv id.

Ask "find recent open-access papers on retrieval-augmented generation evaluation", "search arXiv for speculative decoding papers from this year" or "get the abstract and open-access link for DOI 10.1038/s41586-021-03819-2".

It reads three public indexes: Europe PMC (life sciences and biomedicine, with PubMed and PubMed Central), Crossref (publisher records from all fields) and arXiv (preprints in physics, mathematics, computer science and more). A topic search asks Europe PMC and Crossref together and returns one merged list, each paper with its authors, year, venue, DOI, citation count and the index it came from.

A paper's open-access link is shown only when the index confirms a free full text: a Europe PMC or PubMed Central copy, an arXiv PDF, or a Crossref record that lists a Creative Commons or public-domain license. A missing link means the index does not confirm one, not that none exists.

It does not check whether a paper was retracted and does not verify reference lists: use the Citation Checker plugin for that. It lists papers and abstracts only. It does not read or summarize full texts, and it gives no medical advice.

It stores nothing about you: answers are cached for a few hours and the only lasting record is a daily count of calls per tool.

- Searches Europe PMC and Crossref together for papers on a topic, with an optional start year and an open-access filter
- Searches arXiv preprints by topic, with optional category, start year and newest-first order
- Returns authors, year, venue, DOI, citation count and the index each paper came from
- Shows a free full-text link only when the index confirms one, with its license when stated
- Gets one paper's abstract by DOI, PubMed id or arXiv id
- Names the sources and the date they were read in every answer

## Who it is for

Anyone who asks an AI assistant a question like this one: “Find recent open-access papers on RAG evaluation.”

Roles that use it at work: Researcher.

## Price

Paper Finder is free to use. There is no sign-up, no account and no API key. Calls are limited to 60 calls a minute per network and 5000 calls a day per server, shared by all callers. Repeat questions are answered from a cache.

## Tools it offers

- `search_papers`: Search papers
- `search_arxiv`: Search arXiv
- `get_paper`: Get a paper

## Connect

The MCP server is `https://papers.openkrill.app/mcp` (streamable HTTP). It needs no key.

Claude Code, in one command:

```
claude mcp add --transport http papers https://papers.openkrill.app/mcp
```

Hermes Agent, in one command that answers its two setup questions (no key, enable all tools):

```
printf 'n\ny\n' | hermes mcp add papers --url https://papers.openkrill.app/mcp
```

Or add these lines to `~/.hermes/config.yaml`, under an existing `mcp_servers:` key if the file has one. Start a new Hermes session after either step.

```
mcp_servers:
  papers:
    url: https://papers.openkrill.app/mcp
```

Any other agent: give it this page's Markdown address, `https://tools.openkrill.app/tools/papers.md`, and ask it to connect Paper Finder.

Install guides, each checked with a real call: [Paper Finder in ChatGPT](https://tools.openkrill.app/integrations/papers/chatgpt), [Paper Finder in Claude](https://tools.openkrill.app/integrations/papers/claude), [Paper Finder in Cursor](https://tools.openkrill.app/integrations/papers/cursor), [Paper Finder in VS Code](https://tools.openkrill.app/integrations/papers/vscode), [Paper Finder in Pi](https://tools.openkrill.app/integrations/papers/pi).

## Job recipes for agents

Step-by-step recipes that walk an agent through 3 jobs with this server's tools:

- Search papers, with `search_papers`
- Search arXiv, with `search_arxiv`
- Get a paper, with `get_paper`

[Download the recipes as SKILL.md](https://tools.openkrill.app/skills/papers-jobs/SKILL.md). Save it as `papers-jobs/SKILL.md` in your agent's skills folder. A connected MCP client gets the same recipes from `prompts/list` on this server.

It is listed under Research and public facts in the [full tool list](https://tools.openkrill.app/tools). The same facts in plain text are in [llms.txt](https://tools.openkrill.app/llms.txt).

Source: the Paper Finder listing, version 1.0.1. As of 2026-10-18.