Crossref
NPM · @PIPEWORX/MCP-CROSSREF · 2 COMPONENTS
Crossref MCP — wraps the Crossref REST API (academic papers, free, no auth)
Available components
Last scanned (7 hours ago)
Scores higher than 76% of npm servers
Category Education and Research
How this component scores in each security and reliability category. Every signal is checked automatically from public evidence about the published package, including repeated runs of it in an isolated sandbox, and we only credit what we can confirm. How we score → Why this is hard to score →
Supply Chain Security100
- No malware found by supply-chain analysis.Pass
- No known CVEs affecting this package version or its production dependencies.Pass
- No install/post-install scripts declared.Pass
- No production dependencies, so there is no dependency health to assess. View diagnostics → Pass
Provenance & Transparency97
- Source repository is publicly reachable at the declared URL. View diagnostics → Pass
- Cryptographically verified build provenance (signed, bound to pipeworx-io/mcp-crossref). View diagnostics → Pass
- Clear OSI-approved license (MIT).Pass
- Actively maintained (last published 4 days ago).Pass
- Disclosure check failed: no security disclosure policy was found in the source repository. See how to fix → Fail
Schema Quality & AI Usability68
- AI-judged instruction clarity (excellent).Pass
- Context-footprint check failed: tool/resource definitions use about 679 tokens (~226/item across 3 items; 3 tools + 0 resources), over budget; trim descriptions and params. See how to fix → Fail
- Usage-examples check failed: none of the tools include examples. See how to fix → Fail
Stability & Change Management23
- Stability observed for 7 of 30 days with no destabilising changes; credit accrues until the full window elapses.Partial
Tool Coverage100
- 100% of tools have a non-trivial description (not blank, and not just the tool's name).Pass
- 100% of tool parameters carry a description.Pass
Tool Safety100
- No prompt-injection markers were found in the server instructions, tool names or descriptions we captured.Pass
- We read all 3 captured tool definition(s), and no name or description among them implies an irreversible operation.Pass
- An AI judge read all 4 captured unit(s) of tool text and found none that tries to manipulate the model reading it.Pass
Capabilities100
- Implements a supported MCP spec version (2025-11-25); the latest is 2026-07-28.Pass
Every change we have recorded for this component, newest first. Security-relevant changes are always shown. ▲ marks a change for the better, ▼ a change for the worse; unmarked changes are neutral.
- 5 Nov 26 +1
No change was recorded against any check on this day. Stability & Change Management went from 20 to 23. That category is still filling its 30-day observation window: 6 days of observed history at the previous scan, 7 at this one. The score rises as the window fills, whether or not the server changes.
- 3 Nov 26 +1
No change was recorded against any check on this day. Stability & Change Management went from 13 to 17. That category is still filling its 30-day observation window: 4 days of observed history at the previous scan, 5 at this one. The score rises as the window fills, whether or not the server changes.
- 1 Nov 26 +26
- Malware scan: unverified → pass ▲ security
- Known CVEs: unverified → pass ▲ security
- Dependency health: unverified → pass ▲ functional
- 31 Oct 26 −25
- Known CVEs: pass → unverified ▼ security
- Malware scan: pass → unverified ▼ security
- Dependency health: pass → unverified ▼ functional
- Package version: 1.1.0 → 1.1.1 functional
- 29 Oct 26 80
First indexed and scored.
Diagnostic detail from the automated scan of this channel: what the scanner observed at each step, so you can see exactly where a check passed or failed. It is informational only and never changes the trust score.
Captured 5 Nov 2026 · Analysed npm/@pipeworx/mcp-crossref@1.1.1
Provenance Verified
A signed build attestation was found and verified, binding this exact artifact to the source repository it claims to come from.
| Result | Verified |
|---|---|
| Ecosystem | npm |
| Reason | Verified |
| Discovered via | Registry attestation endpoint |
| Source repo | pipeworx-io/mcp-crossref |
| Certificate issuer | https://token.actions.githubusercontent.com |
| Certificate SAN | https://github.com/pipeworx-io/mcp-crossref/.github/workflows/publish.yml@refs/heads/main |
| Rekor log index | 3612301704 |
| Predicate type | SLSA build provenance https://slsa.dev/provenance/v1 |
| Subject digest | sha512:1d7ba52ad0c4655e2c3838e0b578776d2dd4557e918483b2416ab2bdb5332f7936484a448e22dbf2fcf2fa52a4133c32286c2e6c559cac0070aa2388a |
Background: How many MCP packages publish verified provenance →
Dependencies 0 packages
| Packages resolved | 0 |
|---|---|
| Tree resolution | Complete |
Background: SBOMs and build attestations, explained →
The tools this component advertises to a client, with an estimated token cost for each. Expand a tool to see its parameters and schema. The per-tool counts are indicative and are not scored directly; the schema's total context footprint is one signal in Schema Quality & AI Usability. A tool's description is untrusted text the model reads on every call, which is what makes this list a security surface and not just an inventory: how tool poisoning works →
get_journal ~69
Get the 5 most recent works from a journal by ISSN (e.g., "2041-1723"). Returns titles, authors, DOIs, and publication dates.
| Name | Type | Req | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| issn | string | yes | Journal ISSN (e.g., "1476-4687" for Nature) |
No output schema declared.
No examples provided.
get_work ~70
Get full metadata for a publication by DOI (e.g., "10.1038/nature12373"). Returns title, authors, abstract, journal, publisher, citations, and subjects.
| Name | Type | Req | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| doi | string | yes | DOI of the work (e.g., "10.1038/nature12373") |
No output schema declared.
No examples provided.
search_works ~488
Search academic papers, books, and datasets via Crossref. For "search works titled X" / finding a SPECIFIC paper by its title, pass `title` (title-scoped — ranks the exact paper first). Beyond keyword search you can SORT by citation count or publication date and FILTER by date range, work type, author, and JOURNAL (`journal` = a journal name like "Progress in Materials Science" or an ISSN; results are restricted to that journal only) — e.g. "most-cited papers on transformers" (sort=citations), "papers on LLMs since 2024" (from_date=2024-01-01), "recent journal articles by an author". Returns titles, authors, journal, DOIs, citation counts, and dates.
| Name | Type | Req | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| author | string | – | Search/restrict by author name (e.g. "Hinton", "Yann LeCun"). |
| from_date | string | – | Only works published on/after this date (YYYY-MM-DD or YYYY). |
| journal | string | – | Restrict results to ONE journal: its name (e.g. "Progress in Materials Science", resolved to its ISSNs) or an ISSN (e.g. "0079-6425"). Returns only that journal's works, never other journals' papers. |
| limit | number | – | Number of results to return (1-100, default 10) |
| query | string | – | Keyword query over all fields (e.g. "climate change machine learning"). Optional if "title", "author" or "journal" is given. |
| sort | string | – | Result ordering: "relevance" (default), "citations" (most-cited first), or "published" (newest first; note Crossref has some records with erroneous future dates). |
| title | string | – | Title-scoped search — use when looking for a specific paper by its (partial or full) title, e.g. "Remus High Availability Asynchronous Virtual Machine Replication". |
| type | string | – | Restrict to a Crossref work type, e.g. "journal-article", "book", "proceedings-article", "dataset", "posted-content" (preprints). |
| until_date | string | – | Only works published on/before this date (YYYY-MM-DD or YYYY). |
No output schema declared.
No examples provided.
How do I install the Crossref MCP server?
Crossref runs locally as an npm package, launched with npx -y @pipeworx/mcp-crossref. Ready-made configuration for Claude, Cursor, VS Code, Codex and 5 more is on this page, copied from each client's own documentation.
npm · @pipeworx/mcp-crossref
claude mcp add pipeworx-io-crossref -- npx -y @pipeworx/mcp-crossref
What is the Crossref MCP server?
Crossref is an MCP server listed in the public MCP registry as io.github.pipeworx-io/crossref. Crossref MCP, wraps the Crossref REST API (academic papers, free, no auth). This page covers its npm package (@pipeworx/mcp-crossref).
Is the Crossref MCP server safe to use?
Crossref scores 83 out of 100 on VerifyMCP. We found no known CVEs affecting it as of 5 November 2026. It declares no install or post-install scripts. Its build provenance is signed and verified. That is a record of what we were able to check automatically, not an endorsement. The category breakdown on this page shows every signal behind the number, including the ones we could not confirm.
What tools does the Crossref MCP server expose?
Crossref exposes 3 tools: search_works, get_work, get_journal. Their descriptions and schemas cost roughly 627 tokens of context every time the server is loaded.
Is the Crossref MCP server still maintained?
Crossref is still listed as active in the MCP registry. We last reached this channel on 5 November 2026. Those dates come from our own scans of the registry and the channel itself, not from anything the publisher announced.
What licence is the Crossref MCP server under?
Crossref declares the MIT licence, which is OSI-approved. That covers the source only, and says nothing about the cost of any service it calls.