Openalex Mcp Server

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Tools

Five tools for querying the OpenAlex academic research catalog:

Tool Name	Description
openalex_search_entities	Search, filter, sort, or retrieve by ID across all 8 entity types.
openalex_analyze_trends	Group-by aggregation for trend and distribution analysis.
openalex_resolve_name	Resolve a name or an identifier (DOI, ORCID, ROR, PMID, PMCID, ISSN, OpenAlex ID) to an OpenAlex ID.
openalex_get_citation_graph	Walk the citation graph one hop from a seed work: cites, cited_by, or related_to.
openalex_describe_fields	List valid filter, group_by, and select field names for an entity type — call before building a query to avoid invalid-field errors.

openalex_search_entities

Primary discovery and lookup tool. Covers all OpenAlex entity types (works, authors, sources, institutions, topics, keywords, publishers, funders).

• Retrieve a single entity by ID (OpenAlex ID, DOI, ORCID, ROR, PMID, PMCID, ISSN). id takes precedence: search criteria passed alongside it are not applied, and the response says which ones were dropped rather than echoing them back as though they ran. The search-only validations (semantic page cap, sample with cursor, seed without sample) are skipped too — a lookup is never rejected over parameters it ignores
• Keyword search with boolean operators, quoted phrases, wildcards, and fuzzy matching
• Exact and AI semantic search modes
• Rich filter syntax: AND across fields, OR within fields (us|gb), NOT (!us), ranges (2020-2024), comparisons (>100)
• Sensible default field selection per entity type, applied to both searches and ID lookups — prevents oversized responses; pass select to choose fields, or ["*"] for the full record
• Invalid select field names produce an error listing the valid fields for that entity type
• Formatted MCP output is a generic markdown renderer — every returned field is surfaced without per-entity-type hard-coding
• Cursor pagination and up to 100 results per page; sort takes a single key or a comma-separated list, with the - descending prefix applied per key
• display_name is nullable — OpenAlex holds no title for paratext and other untitled records, which pass through instead of failing the whole page

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openalex_analyze_trends

Aggregate entities into groups and count them for trend, distribution, and comparative analysis.

• Group by any supported field (publication year, OA status, institution, country, topic, etc.)
• Combine with filters to scope the population before aggregation
• Up to 200 groups per page with cursor pagination
• Supports include_unknown to show entities with no value for the grouped field

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openalex_resolve_name

The front door for turning anything you have into an OpenAlex ID. Always use this before filtering by entity — names are ambiguous, IDs are not.

• A name or partial name runs an autocomplete search: up to 10 matches with disambiguation hints, ~200ms
• An identifier resolves deterministically to the single record it addresses — OpenAlex ID, DOI, ORCID, ROR, PMID, PMCID, or ISSN, bare or in URL form. No entity_type needed: the identifier determines its own
• An identifier that matches nothing returns an empty result naming the scheme, not name-search advice
• Optional entity type filter and field-level filters, applied to name queries

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openalex_get_citation_graph

One-hop citation graph traversal from a seed work. Wraps the OpenAlex cites/cited_by/related_to filters behind an explicit direction argument so callers do not have to know the filter names.

• cites: works that cite the seed (incoming citations)
• cited_by: works the seed cites (its reference list)
• related_to: OpenAlex algorithmic "related works" (~8-30 typical, may be empty for less-cited seeds)
• Accepts OpenAlex IDs, DOIs, PMIDs, PMCIDs as seed_id; validates the seed via a singleton /works/{id} lookup before walking, so non-existent seeds surface as NotFound
• Stacks with filters/sort/select to narrow the graph (e.g., publication_year=">2020", is_oa="true")

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openalex_describe_fields

Discover valid field names before constructing a query — avoids invalid-field 400 errors. Backed by a catalog generated from OpenAlex's own field validation.

• List valid fields for any entity type and context (filter, group_by, or select)
• group_by returns the subset of the filter set OpenAlex can aggregate — raw date fields, *.search operators, and from_*/to_* range modifiers are excluded
• Pass query (a partial or guessed name) to rank results by name similarity — surfaces the right field when you only know roughly what you want
• Complements the ranked "did you mean" suggestions now appended to invalid-field errors on the search, trends, and citation-graph tools

Prompts

Prompt	Description
openalex_literature_review	Guides a systematic literature search: formulate query, search, filter, analyze citation network, synthesize findings.
openalex_research_landscape	Analyzes the research landscape for a topic: volume trends, top authors/institutions, open access rates, funding sources.

Features

Built on @cyanheads/mcp-ts-core:

• Declarative tool definitions — single file per tool, framework handles registration and validation
• Unified error handling across all tools
• Pluggable auth (none, jwt, oauth)
• Swappable storage backends via the framework (not currently used by this server)
• Structured logging with optional OpenTelemetry tracing
• Runs locally (stdio/HTTP) or in Docker from the same codebase

OpenAlex-specific:

• Typed API client with automatic ID normalization (DOI, ORCID, ROR, PMID, PMCID, ISSN, OpenAlex URLs)
• Abstract reconstruction from inverted indices — plaintext instead of OpenAlex's position-keyed encoding
• HTTP status codes mapped to specific MCP error classes (400 → InvalidParams, 422 → ValidationError, 429 → RateLimited, etc.) with upstream messages surfaced
• Every API-calling tool reports what the call spent against the OpenAlex daily budget and what is left of it, so a paginated sweep can be priced before it runs instead of ending in a 429. An account holding prepaid balance sees that too, since it keeps serving once the day's allowance is gone
• Timeout-aware request retries and cancellation support via AbortSignal

Getting Started

Public Hosted Instance

A public instance is available at https://openalex.caseyjhand.com/mcp — no installation required. Point any MCP client at it via Streamable HTTP:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "openalex-mcp-server": {
      "type": "streamable-http",
      "url": "https://openalex.caseyjhand.com/mcp"
    }
  }
}

Self-Hosted / Local

Add to your MCP client config (e.g., claude_desktop_config.json):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "openalex-mcp-server": {
      "type": "stdio",
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@cyanheads/openalex-mcp-server"],
      "env": {
        "OPENALEX_API_KEY": "your-openalex-api-key"
      }
    }
  }
}

OPENALEX_API_KEY is optional — set it to a free OpenAlex account key for keyed rate limits and budget under OpenAlex's usage-based pricing, or omit it for anonymous access. Set OPENALEX_MAILTO to an email if you want to identify yourself to OpenAlex (the polite pool).

Prerequisites

• Bun v1.3.0 or higher (for development)

Installation

1. Clone the repository:

git clone https://github.com/cyanheads/openalex-mcp-server.git

2. Navigate into the directory:

cd openalex-mcp-server

3. Install dependencies:

bun install

Configuration

Variable	Description	Default
OPENALEX_API_KEY	Optional. OpenAlex account API key, sent upstream as api_key= (free from openalex.org/settings/api). Without it, anonymous rate limits apply.	—
OPENALEX_MAILTO	Optional. Email sent upstream as mailto= to identify yourself to OpenAlex (the polite pool). A courtesy identifier, separate from the API key.	—
OPENALEX_BASE_URL	OpenAlex API base URL.	https://api.openalex.org
MCP_TRANSPORT_TYPE	Transport: stdio or http.	stdio
MCP_HTTP_PORT	Port for HTTP server.	3010
MCP_AUTH_MODE	Auth mode: none, jwt, or oauth.	none
MCP_ALLOWED_ORIGINS	Comma-separated allow-list of browser Origin headers for HTTP transport. Unset = loopback-only; set to * to disable.	loopback only
MCP_LOG_LEVEL	Log level (RFC 5424).	debug
LOGS_DIR	Directory for log files (Node.js only).	<project-root>/logs
OTEL_ENABLED	Enable OpenTelemetry instrumentation (spans, metrics, completion logs).	false

Running the Server

Local Development

• Build and run the production version:

  bun run build
  bun run start:http   # or start:stdio
  

• Run checks and tests:

  bun run devcheck     # Lints, formats, type-checks
  bun run test         # Runs test suite
  

Docker

docker build -t openalex-mcp-server .
docker run -e OPENALEX_API_KEY=your-key -p 3010:3010 openalex-mcp-server

Project Structure

Directory	Purpose
src/mcp-server/tools/definitions/	Tool definitions (*.tool.ts).
src/mcp-server/prompts/definitions/	Prompt definitions (*.prompt.ts).
src/services/openalex/	OpenAlex API client service and domain types.
src/config/	Environment variable parsing and validation with Zod.
tests/	Unit and integration tests, mirroring the src/ structure.

Development Guide

See CLAUDE.md for development guidelines and architectural rules. The short version:

• Handlers throw, framework catches — no try/catch in tool logic
• Use ctx.log for logging, ctx.state for storage
• Always resolve names to IDs via openalex_resolve_name before using them in filters

Contributing

Issues and pull requests are welcome. Run checks before submitting:

bun run devcheck
bun run test

License

Apache-2.0 — see LICENSE for details.