BGPT Paper Search

Overview

BGPT is a remote MCP server that searches a curated database of scientific papers built from raw experimental data extracted from full-text studies. Unlike traditional literature databases that return titles and abstracts, BGPT returns structured data from the actual paper content — methods, quantitative results, sample sizes, quality assessments, and 25+ metadata fields per paper.

When to Use This Skill

Use BGPT when the value is in structured full-text experimental data, not titles/abstracts:

• Building evidence tables for a meta-analysis, scoping review, or clinical guideline
• Extracting sample sizes, effect sizes, methods, protocols, or conclusions across studies
• Comparing methodologies, or filtering papers by quality score / evidence grading

For broad title/abstract discovery use alterlab-pubmed; for real-time web-grounded summaries of recent developments use alterlab-perplexity.

Setup

BGPT is a remote MCP server — no local installation required.

Claude Desktop / Claude Code

Add to your MCP configuration:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "bgpt": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["mcp-remote", "https://bgpt.pro/mcp/sse"]
    }
  }
}

npm (alternative)

npx bgpt-mcp

Usage

Once configured, use the search_papers tool provided by the BGPT MCP server:

Search for papers about: "CRISPR gene editing efficiency in human cells"

The server returns structured results including:

• Title, authors, journal, year, DOI
• Methods: Experimental techniques, models, protocols
• Results: Key findings with quantitative data
• Sample sizes: Number of subjects/samples
• Quality scores: Study quality assessments
• Conclusions: Author conclusions and implications

Pricing

• Free tier: 50 free results, no API key required
• Paid: $0.02 per result (billed per result actually returned, not per search) with an API key from bgpt.pro/mcp

Complementary Skills

Pairs well with:

• alterlab-literature-review — gather structured data with BGPT, then synthesize
• alterlab-pubmed — PubMed for broad discovery, BGPT for deep experimental data
• alterlab-biorxiv — combine preprint discovery with full-text data extraction
• alterlab-pyzotero — manage citations from BGPT search results