Add SEMANTIC_SCHOLAR_API_KEY configuration option for Paper Search MCP Server

[hwanghub]

Description

I've been using the Paper Search MCP Server through Docker MCP Toolkit and noticed that while the original server (https://github.com/openags/paper-search-mcp) supports an optional SEMANTIC_SCHOLAR_API_KEY environment variable for enhanced Semantic Scholar searches (higher limits), this configuration option isn't available in the Docker Desktop UI.

Current Behavior

The Paper Search server appears in the MCP Toolkit Catalog, but there's no configuration option to add the Semantic Scholar API key, even though the server supports it.

Workaround

I managed to get it working by manually editing ~/.docker/mcp/catalogs/docker-mcp.yaml and adding these lines to the paper-search entry:

paper-search:
  # ... existing configuration ...
  secrets:
    - name: semantic_scholar.api_key
      env: SEMANTIC_SCHOLAR_API_KEY
      example: YOUR_API_KEY_HERE (optional)
  env:
    - name: SEMANTIC_SCHOLAR_API_KEY
      value: ""

This works perfectly and now I can input my API key through the Docker Desktop UI and do continuous search.

Feature Request

Could this configuration be added to the official catalog definition in future versions? I'm concerned about losing this custom configuration when Docker Desktop updates. It would be great if users could optionally configure the Semantic Scholar API key directly through the UI without manual file editing.

Environment

• Docker Desktop version: 4.48.0
• OS: macOS 26.1

Thanks for the great work on the MCP Toolkit! It's been really useful for integrating these tools.

[slimslenderslacks]

@hwanghub I'm going to move this issue to our mcp-registry repo where we are working on the catalog entries.

[slimslenderslacks]

@hwanghub the current configuration is here https://github.com/docker/mcp-registry/blob/main/servers/paper-search/server.yaml - it probably makes sense for us add this api-key secret. We can review from here.

[hwanghub]

@slimslenderslacks Thank you.