AI assistants invent references that look perfect: real author names, a real journal, a plausible DOI, and no paper behind them. Phở Research Tools lets your assistant check its own work against the public scholarly databases before you see it. Verify references. Paste a reference list in any style, BibTeX or RIS. Each entry comes back verified, real but with wrong details (with the corrected record), retracted, likely fabricated, or not found, with the database record it was checked against. Format citations. APA 7, MLA 9, Chicago, Harvard, Vancouver, IEEE and AMA, or export BibTeX, RIS and CSL-JSON. Verified references are formatted from the real record, so the bibliography carries the corrected details. Search papers. OpenAlex and PubMed, filtered by study type and year. Every result has a DOI or PubMed ID that resolves; retracted papers are left out and preprints are labelled. Check retractions. Retraction, expression-of-concern and correction notices for a list of DOIs. PRISMA 2020 flow diagram. Draws the diagram from your counts and warns when the numbers do not add up. No account needed. The tools are read-only lookups in public databases; they cannot read your chats or files, and there is no record of who checked what.

MCP readiness

B · 86/100

Readiness is how fully this listing follows its protocol and how it behaved in our probes over 30 days. It is shown for reference and does not move it in search. Search order and leaderboards use the separate quality grade (here C+, 70.0/100), which weighs availability, conformance, p95 speed and descriptor. How the two differ

Valid MCP handshake	10/10	initialize and tools/list both answered.
Live MCP endpoint	23/25	Endpoint answers the MCP initialize handshake (7090 ms); very slow response -2.
Protocol revision	8/10	Speaks MCP 2025-11-25, 1 revision(s) behind 2026-07-28.
Signed descriptor	n/a	No MCP standard defines a signed server descriptor.
Uptime (30 days)	15/15	30/30 probes succeeded over 30 days (100%).
Tool declaration	10/10	Lists 13 tool(s) with descriptions.
Verified identity	5/10	Publisher declared (repository, package or homepage); claim this listing to verify domain control.
Freshness + modern flags	4/5	seen in a source within 7 days.
Auth declaration	2/5	Declares credential scheme: smithery_api_key.

Applicable criteria total 90 points, scaled to 100.

Responsiveness: Very slow (7090 ms; bands ≤2.5 s, ≤5 s, ≤8 s, slower; penalty only).

Measured 2026-11-11.

Nine criteria, the same as the A2A readiness score, read from our daily MCP probe (initialize + tools/list) and 30-day probe history. No MCP standard defines a signed server descriptor, so that criterion is n/a and the other 90 points are scaled to 100. Grades: A>=90, B>=75, C>=60, D>=40, F<40. Display only: search order uses the quality grade.

Compared with peers

Against 53,039 reachable MCP servers in our daily snapshot (2026-11-12 06:46 UTC). Display only; it does not change search order.

Readiness: Higher than 80% of peers; This listing 86 · peer median 81
Latency: Faster than 38% of peers; This listing 436 ms · peer median 326 ms

Where it loses the most points, and how to win them back

Verified identity −5 — Claim the listing and prove control of its domain.
Now: Publisher declared (repository, package or homepage); claim this listing to verify domain control.
Auth declaration −3 — State how to authenticate (an auth scheme, or that none is needed).
Now: Declares credential scheme: smithery_api_key.
Live MCP endpoint −2 — Answer initialize and tools/list at the declared endpoint.
Now: Endpoint answers the MCP initialize handshake (7090 ms); very slow response -2.

How many agent tools actually work · All statistics

Listed in

Directories this entry was found in.

smithery since 2026-10-06 ↗

How to connect

MCP endpoint (streamable-http)

https://server.smithery.ai/thaohienhomes/pho-research-tools/mcp

JSON-RPC initialize probe

curl -X POST https://server.smithery.ai/thaohienhomes/pho-research-tools/mcp \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -H 'Accept: application/json, text/event-stream' \
  -d '{"jsonrpc":"2.0","id":1,"method":"initialize","params":{}}'

Homepage

https://pho.chat/tools/mcp/

Listed at (smithery)

https://pho.chat/tools/mcp/