Writing AI-assisted academic text: which MCP tools should I connect?

AI can be an excellent tool to help scientists develop ideas, write papers, and refine their output. My impression is that resistance to adoption comes from a real limitation: research requires more than text editing. It requires connecting to the sources of knowledge. Since Anthropic popularized MCP servers, that connection has become practical. MCP (Model Context Protocol) is an open standard that lets AI models communicate directly with external tools and data sources. For scientists, this means your AI assistant can search the literature, retrieve papers, and rank them by citation impact, all within the same conversation. The best source for this is Scite, a paid service that not only counts citations but tells you whether a paper was supported or contradicted by subsequent work. Here I present the best free and low-cost alternatives, what each one is good for, and how to combine them depending on your workflow. The ranking below compares seven available MCP servers across citation quality, coverage, and workflow fit, with notes on what to pair with what. I have tried some of them and find them useful for different purposes.I’d genuinely like to hear what has worked for you.patricio@pperezh.com.