MCP-DBLP

A Model Context Protocol (MCP) server that provides access to the DBLP computer science bibliography database for Large Language Models (accompanying paper accepted to AI4SC @ AAAI-26).

Overview

The MCP-DBLP integrates the DBLP (Digital Bibliography & Library Project) API with LLMs through the Model Context Protocol, enabling AI models to:

Search and retrieve academic publications from the DBLP database
Process citations and generate BibTeX entries
Perform fuzzy matching on publication titles and author names
Extract and format bibliographic information
Process embedded references in documents
Direct BibTeX export that bypasses LLM processing for maximum accuracy

Features

Comprehensive search capabilities with boolean queries
Fuzzy title and author name matching
BibTeX entry retrieval directly from DBLP
Publication filtering by year and venue
Statistical analysis of publication data
Direct BibTeX export capability that bypasses LLM processing for maximum accuracy

Available Tools

Tool Name	Description
`get_instructions`	Get usage instructions and workflow guidance
`search`	Search DBLP for publications using boolean queries
`fuzzy_title_search`	Search publications with fuzzy title matching
`get_author_publications`	Retrieve publications for a specific author
`get_venue_info`	Get detailed information about a publication venue
`calculate_statistics`	Generate statistics from publication results
`add_bibtex_entry`	Add a BibTeX entry to collection by DBLP key
`export_bibtex`	Export all collected BibTeX entries to a .bib file

Feedback

Provide feedback to the author via this form.

System Requirements

Python 3.11+
uv

Installation

Claude Code

Simply run:

claude mcp add mcp-dblp -- uvx mcp-dblp

Claude Desktop

Add to your Claude Desktop configuration file:

macOS/Linux: ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json
Windows: %APPDATA%\Claude\claude_desktop_config.json

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

From Source (Development)

git clone https://github.com/szeider/mcp-dblp.git
cd mcp-dblp
uv venv && source .venv/bin/activate
uv pip install -e .

Then configure Claude Desktop with:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "mcp-dblp": {
      "command": "uv",
      "args": ["--directory", "/path/to/mcp-dblp/", "run", "mcp-dblp"]
    }
  }
}

Instructions

Usage instructions are available via the get_instructions tool. Key workflow points are shown in the tool description; call the tool for complete details. See also instructions_prompt.md.

Tool Details

search

Search DBLP for publications using a boolean query string.

Parameters:

query (string, required): A query string that may include boolean operators 'and' and 'or' (case-insensitive)
max_results (number, optional): Maximum number of publications to return. Default is 10
year_from (number, optional): Lower bound for publication year
year_to (number, optional): Upper bound for publication year
venue_filter (string, optional): Case-insensitive substring filter for publication venues (e.g., 'iclr')
include_bibtex (boolean, optional): Whether to include BibTeX entries in the results. Default is false

fuzzy_title_search

Search DBLP for publications with fuzzy title matching.

Parameters:

title (string, required): Full or partial title of the publication (case-insensitive)
similarity_threshold (number, required): A float between 0 and 1 where 1.0 means an exact match
max_results (number, optional): Maximum number of publications to return. Default is 10
year_from (number, optional): Lower bound for publication year
year_to (number, optional): Upper bound for publication year
venue_filter (string, optional): Case-insensitive substring filter for publication venues
include_bibtex (boolean, optional): Whether to include BibTeX entries in the results. Default is false

get_author_publications

Retrieve publication details for a specific author with fuzzy matching.

Parameters:

author_name (string, required): Full or partial author name (case-insensitive)
similarity_threshold (number, required): A float between 0 and 1 where 1.0 means an exact match
max_results (number, optional): Maximum number of publications to return. Default is 20
include_bibtex (boolean, optional): Whether to include BibTeX entries in the results. Default is false

get_venue_info

Retrieve detailed information about a publication venue.

Parameters:

venue_name (string, required): Venue name or abbreviation (e.g., 'ICLR' or full name)

calculate_statistics

Calculate statistics from a list of publication results.

Parameters:

results (array, required): An array of publication objects, each with at least 'title', 'authors', 'venue', and 'year'

add_bibtex_entry

Add a BibTeX entry to the collection for later export.

Parameters:

dblp_key (string, required): The DBLP key from search results (e.g., "conf/nips/VaswaniSPUJGKP17")
citation_key (string, required): The citation key to use in the .bib file (e.g., "Vaswani2017")

Behavior:

Fetches BibTeX entry directly from DBLP using the provided key
Replaces the citation key with your custom key
Adds to session collection (duplicate keys are overwritten)
Returns immediate success/failure feedback with collection count
Allows retry of individual failed entries

export_bibtex

Export all collected BibTeX entries to a .bib file.

Parameters:

path (string, required): Absolute path for the .bib file (e.g., "/path/to/refs.bib")

Behavior:

Saves all entries added via add_bibtex_entry to the specified path
The .bib extension is added automatically if missing
Parent directories are created if needed
Clears the collection after successful export
Returns the full path to the saved file
Returns error if collection is empty

Important Note: The BibTeX entries are fetched directly from DBLP with a 10-second timeout protection and are not processed, modified, or hallucinated by the LLM. This ensures maximum accuracy and trustworthiness of the bibliographic data. Only the citation keys are modified as specified. If a request times out, an error message is returned and the entry is not added to the collection.

Example

Input text:

Our exploration focuses on two types of explanation problems, abductive and contrastive, in local and global contexts (Marques-Silva 2023). Abductive explanations (Ignatiev, Narodytska, and Marques-Silva 2019), corresponding to prime-implicant explanations (Shih, Choi, and Darwiche 2018) and sufficient reason explanations (Darwiche and Ji 2022), clarify specific decision-making instances, while contrastive explanations (Miller 2019; Ignatiev et al. 2020), corresponding to necessary reason explanations (Darwiche and Ji 2022), make explicit the reasons behind the non-selection of alternatives. Conversely, global explanations (Ribeiro, Singh, and Guestrin 2016; Ignatiev, Narodytska, and Marques-Silva 2019) aim to unravel models' decision patterns across various inputs.

Output text:

Our exploration focuses on two types of explanation problems, abductive and contrastive, in local and global contexts \cite{MarquesSilvaI23}. Abductive explanations \cite{IgnatievNM19}, corresponding to prime-implicant explanations \cite{ShihCD18} and sufficient reason explanations \cite{DarwicheJ22}, clarify specific decision-making instances, while contrastive explanations \cite{Miller19}; \cite{IgnatievNA020}, corresponding to necessary reason explanations \cite{DarwicheJ22}, make explicit the reasons behind the non-selection of alternatives. Conversely, global explanations \cite{Ribeiro0G16}; \cite{IgnatievNM19} aim to unravel models' decision patterns across various inputs.

Output Bibtex

All references have been successfully exported to a BibTeX file at: /absolute/path/to/bibtex/20250305_231431.bib

@article{MarquesSilvaI23,
 author       = {Jo{\~{a}}o Marques{-}Silva and
                 Alexey Ignatiev},
 title        = {No silver bullet: interpretable {ML} models must be explained},
 journal      = {Frontiers Artif. Intell.},
 volume       = {6},
 year         = {2023},
 url          = {https://doi.org/10.3389/frai.2023.1128212},
 doi          = {10.3389/FRAI.2023.1128212},
 timestamp    = {Tue, 07 May 2024 20:23:47 +0200},
 biburl       = {https://dblp.org/rec/journals/frai/MarquesSilvaI23.bib},
 bibsource    = {dblp computer science bibliography, https://dblp.org}
}

@inproceedings{IgnatievNM19,
 author       = {Alexey Ignatiev and
                 Nina Narodytska and
                 Jo{\~{a}}o Marques{-}Silva},
 title        = {Abduction-Based Explanations for Machine Learning Models},
 booktitle    = {The Thirty-Third {AAAI} Conference on Artificial Intelligence, {AAAI}
                 2019, The Thirty-First Innovative Applications of Artificial Intelligence
                 Conference, {IAAI} 2019, The Ninth {AAAI} Symposium on Educational
                 Advances in Artificial Intelligence, {EAAI} 2019, Honolulu, Hawaii,
                 USA, January 27 - February 1, 2019},
 pages        = {1511--1519},
 publisher    = {{AAAI} Press},
 year         = {2019},
 url          = {https://doi.org/10.1609/aaai.v33i01.33011511},
 doi          = {10.1609/AAAI.V33I01.33011511},
 timestamp    = {Mon, 04 Sep 2023 12:29:24 +0200},
 biburl       = {https://dblp.org/rec/conf/aaai/IgnatievNM19.bib},
 bibsource    = {dblp computer science bibliography, https://dblp.org}
}

@inproceedings{ShihCD18,
 author       = {Andy Shih and
                 Arthur Choi and
                 Adnan Darwiche},
 editor       = {J{\'{e}}r{\^{o}}me Lang},
 title        = {A Symbolic Approach to Explaining Bayesian Network Classifiers},
 booktitle    = {Proceedings of the Twenty-Seventh International Joint Conference on
                 Artificial Intelligence, {IJCAI} 2018, July 13-19, 2018, Stockholm,
                 Sweden},
 pages        = {5103--5111},
 publisher    = {ijcai.org},
 year         = {2018},
 url          = {https://doi.org/10.24963/ijcai.2018/708},
 doi          = {10.24963/IJCAI.2018/708},
 timestamp    = {Tue, 20 Aug 2019 16:19:08 +0200},
 biburl       = {https://dblp.org/rec/conf/ijcai/ShihCD18.bib},
 bibsource    = {dblp computer science bibliography, https://dblp.org}
}

@inproceedings{DarwicheJ22,
 author       = {Adnan Darwiche and
                 Chunxi Ji},
 title        = {On the Computation of Necessary and Sufficient Explanations},
 booktitle    = {Thirty-Sixth {AAAI} Conference on Artificial Intelligence, {AAAI}
                 2022, Thirty-Fourth Conference on Innovative Applications of Artificial
                 Intelligence, {IAAI} 2022, The Twelveth Symposium on Educational Advances
                 in Artificial Intelligence, {EAAI} 2022 Virtual Event, February 22
                 - March 1, 2022},
 pages        = {5582--5591},
 publisher    = {{AAAI} Press},
 year         = {2022},
 url          = {https://doi.org/10.1609/aaai.v36i5.20498},
 doi          = {10.1609/AAAI.V36I5.20498},
 timestamp    = {Mon, 04 Sep 2023 16:50:24 +0200},
 biburl       = {https://dblp.org/rec/conf/aaai/DarwicheJ22.bib},
 bibsource    = {dblp computer science bibliography, https://dblp.org}
}

@article{Miller19,
 author       = {Tim Miller},
 title        = {Explanation in artificial intelligence: Insights from the social sciences},
 journal      = {Artif. Intell.},
 volume       = {267},
 pages        = {1--38},
 year         = {2019},
 url          = {https://doi.org/10.1016/j.artint.2018.07.007},
 doi          = {10.1016/J.ARTINT.2018.07.007},
 timestamp    = {Thu, 25 May 2023 12:52:41 +0200},
 biburl       = {https://dblp.org/rec/journals/ai/Miller19.bib},
 bibsource    = {dblp computer science bibliography, https://dblp.org}
}

@inproceedings{IgnatievNA020,
 author       = {Alexey Ignatiev and
                 Nina Narodytska and
                 Nicholas Asher and
                 Jo{\~{a}}o Marques{-}Silva},
 editor       = {Matteo Baldoni and
                 Stefania Bandini},
 title        = {From Contrastive to Abductive Explanations and Back Again},
 booktitle    = {AIxIA 2020 - Advances in Artificial Intelligence - XIXth International
                 Conference of the Italian Association for Artificial Intelligence,
                 Virtual Event, November 25-27, 2020, Revised Selected Papers},
 series       = {Lecture Notes in Computer Science},
 volume       = {12414},
 pages        = {335--355},
 publisher    = {Springer},
 year         = {2020},
 url          = {https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77091-4\_21},
 doi          = {10.1007/978-3-030-77091-4\_21},
 timestamp    = {Tue, 15 Jun 2021 17:23:54 +0200},
 biburl       = {https://dblp.org/rec/conf/aiia/IgnatievNA020.bib},
 bibsource    = {dblp computer science bibliography, https://dblp.org}
}

@inproceedings{Ribeiro0G16,
 author       = {Marco T{\'{u}}lio Ribeiro and
                 Sameer Singh and
                 Carlos Guestrin},
 editor       = {Balaji Krishnapuram and
                 Mohak Shah and
                 Alexander J. Smola and
                 Charu C. Aggarwal and
                 Dou Shen and
                 Rajeev Rastogi},
 title        = {"Why Should {I} Trust You?": Explaining the Predictions of Any Classifier},
 booktitle    = {Proceedings of the 22nd {ACM} {SIGKDD} International Conference on
                 Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining, San Francisco, CA, USA, August
                 13-17, 2016},
 pages        = {1135--1144},
 publisher    = {{ACM}},
 year         = {2016},
 url          = {https://doi.org/10.1145/2939672.2939778},
 doi          = {10.1145/2939672.2939778},
 timestamp    = {Fri, 25 Dec 2020 01:14:16 +0100},
 biburl       = {https://dblp.org/rec/conf/kdd/Ribeiro0G16.bib},
 bibsource    = {dblp computer science bibliography, https://dblp.org}
}

Disclaimer

This MCP-DBLP is in its prototype stage and should be used with caution. Users are encouraged to experiment, but any use in critical environments is at their own risk.

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE file for details.

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