The MCP Simple PubMed server provides access to PubMed articles through the Entrez API, allowing you to search the PubMed database, access article abstracts, and download full text for open access articles directly from PubMed.
Note that the tool returns XML-formatted full text, which provides AIs with additional information about document structure. If the tool cannot deliver a paper's full text, it may be worth trying to access it manually through a web browser, as some publications may be accessible this way even if not available through the API.
To install Simple PubMed for Claude Desktop automatically via Smithery:
npx -y @smithery/cli install mcp-simple-pubmed --client claude
You can install the package directly using pip:
pip install mcp-simple-pubmed
The server requires the following environment variables:
The standard rate limit is 3 requests per second. With an API key, this increases to 10 requests per second. You can register for an API key here.
Add the following to your Claude Desktop configuration file (claude_desktop_config.json):
{
"mcpServers": {
"simple-pubmed": {
"command": "python",
"args": ["-m", "mcp_simple_pubmed"],
"env": {
"PUBMED_EMAIL": "[email protected]",
"PUBMED_API_KEY": "your-api-key"
}
}
}
}
{
"mcpServers": {
"simple-pubmed": {
"command": "C:\\Users\\YOUR_USERNAME\\AppData\\Local\\Programs\\Python\\Python311\\python.exe",
"args": [
"-m",
"mcp_simple_pubmed"
],
"env": {
"PUBMED_EMAIL": "[email protected]",
"PUBMED_API_KEY": "your-api-key"
}
}
}
}
After configuration, you can use the tool by asking Claude to search for and retrieve PubMed articles using natural language queries.
To add this MCP server to Claude Code, run this command in your terminal:
claude mcp add-json "simple-pubmed" '{"command":"python","args":["-m","mcp_simple_pubmed"],"env":{"PUBMED_EMAIL":"[email protected]","PUBMED_API_KEY":"your-api-key"}}'See the official Claude Code MCP documentation for more details.
There are two ways to add an MCP server to Cursor. The most common way is to add the server globally in the ~/.cursor/mcp.json file so that it is available in all of your projects.
If you only need the server in a single project, you can add it to the project instead by creating or adding it to the .cursor/mcp.json file.
To add a global MCP server go to Cursor Settings > Tools & Integrations and click "New MCP Server".
When you click that button the ~/.cursor/mcp.json file will be opened and you can add your server like this:
{
"mcpServers": {
"simple-pubmed": {
"command": "python",
"args": [
"-m",
"mcp_simple_pubmed"
],
"env": {
"PUBMED_EMAIL": "[email protected]",
"PUBMED_API_KEY": "your-api-key"
}
}
}
}To add an MCP server to a project you can create a new .cursor/mcp.json file or add it to the existing one. This will look exactly the same as the global MCP server example above.
Once the server is installed, you might need to head back to Settings > MCP and click the refresh button.
The Cursor agent will then be able to see the available tools the added MCP server has available and will call them when it needs to.
You can also explicitly ask the agent to use the tool by mentioning the tool name and describing what the function does.
To add this MCP server to Claude Desktop:
1. Find your configuration file:
~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json%APPDATA%\Claude\claude_desktop_config.json~/.config/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json2. Add this to your configuration file:
{
"mcpServers": {
"simple-pubmed": {
"command": "python",
"args": [
"-m",
"mcp_simple_pubmed"
],
"env": {
"PUBMED_EMAIL": "[email protected]",
"PUBMED_API_KEY": "your-api-key"
}
}
}
}3. Restart Claude Desktop for the changes to take effect