OpenAlex's own MCP server: your agent searches the open scholarly catalog for papers, citations, authors, institutions and research trends.
by Openalex· ResearchUnclaimed · Yours? Claim it
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About
OpenAlex is a free and open catalog of the world's scholarly research, run by a nonprofit team. Its MCP server, which OpenAlex calls the AI agent connector, lets your agent ask the catalog about the literature in plain language. Answers come with titles, authors, venues, citation counts and links, plus the exact query that ran. What you can do with it - Find papers by keyword or by meaning, with filters for year, type, open access, citations, and author, institution, journal, topic or funder - Check a pasted bibliography: whether each reference is real, how well it matched, and its DOI - See who cites a paper, what it references and related work - Find authors, institutions, journals, topics, funders and publishers, and read their profiles - Count and profile a body of work, such as an institution's output, a funder's portfolio or a topic: open-access and top-cited shares, trends by year, fields and collaborators - Build a systematic search, preview the count and a sample, and get the query in OpenAlex's query language (OQL) to reuse - Fix your own OpenAlex author profile: claim it, find works missing from it and submit corrections How it connects Add https://mcp.openalex.org/mcp as a connector or remote MCP server. It's in Claude's connector directory as OpenAlex, and works in Claude on the web, desktop and mobile and in Claude Code. The first time, you sign in at openalex.org with a free OpenAlex account and approve the connection. Good to know - Queries run on your own OpenAlex API key and daily budget, shown on your usage dashboard. If you own an OpenAlex organization, it uses the organization's key. - It changes nothing except your own author profile, and only when you ask. Every other tool only reads. - Retracted works are left out unless you ask for them. - It doesn't fetch full-text PDFs, total the citations across a set of works, or bulk-export results. - A ChatGPT version is on the way; until then ChatGPT can use OpenAlex through its API.
Once it’s added
“What are the most-cited papers on CRISPR off-target effects since 2020, and who are the top authors?”
“Summarize the University of Toronto's 2024 research output: volume, open-access share, top-cited share, strongest fields and top collaborating countries.”
Before you add it
Reads only
Papers, with authors, venues, citation counts and links · Who cites a paper and what it references · Profiles of authors, institutions, journals, topics and funders · Counts and profiles of any set of works
Makes changes · your agent can ask first
Claims your own author profile, when you ask · Submits corrections to your own author profile
From people who use it
Step by step
Nothing new reaches your agent until a person has looked at it.
Plugins people install alongside OpenAlex.
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Write a reviewA hosted server: nothing runs on your machine.
A hosted server: nothing runs on your machine.
A hosted server: nothing runs on your machine.
A hosted server: nothing runs on your machine.
A hosted server: nothing runs on your machine.
A hosted server: nothing runs on your machine.
A hosted server: nothing runs on your machine.
Add to VS Codecopilot mcp add --transport http openalex https://mcp.openalex.org/mcp
A hosted server: nothing runs on your machine.
Add to Cursor
.cursor/mcp.json{
"mcpServers": {
"openalex": {
"url": "https://mcp.openalex.org/mcp"
}
}
}A hosted server: nothing runs on your machine.
claude mcp add --transport http openalex https://mcp.openalex.org/mcp
A hosted server: nothing runs on your machine.
codex mcp add openalex --url https://mcp.openalex.org/mcp
A hosted server: nothing runs on your machine.
~/.gemini/config/mcp_config.json{
"mcpServers": {
"openalex": {
"url": "https://mcp.openalex.org/mcp"
}
}
}A hosted server: nothing runs on your machine.
gemini mcp add --transport http openalex https://mcp.openalex.org/mcp
A hosted server: nothing runs on your machine.
A hosted server: nothing runs on your machine.
openclaw mcp add openalex --url https://mcp.openalex.org/mcp --transport streamable-http
A hosted server: nothing runs on your machine.
opencode mcp add openalex --url https://mcp.openalex.org/mcp
A hosted server: nothing runs on your machine.
hermes mcp add openalex --url https://mcp.openalex.org/mcp
~/.hermes/config.yaml{
"mcp_servers": {
"openalex": {
"url": "https://mcp.openalex.org/mcp"
}
}
}Scanned and passed · checked 4 h ago
Plugins people install alongside OpenAlex.
Anthropic’s life sciences R&D plugin: search papers, compounds, targets and trials, and run single-cell QC and nf-core pipelines.
Turns a high-stakes question into falsifiable hypotheses, parallel searches and a triangulated report, with every source saved and quoted.
Market research skills for product managers: personas, segments, journey maps, TAM/SAM/SOM, competitor analysis and feedback sentiment.
Nobody has shared how they use OpenAlex yet.
“Who at Simon Fraser University works on scientometrics? Top five by output with h-index.”
“Check whether these references are real and give me DOIs: [paste a bibliography]”
“Who cites this paper: 10.1038/s41586-021-03819-2? Summarize the follow-up work.”
“Build a systematic search for studies of vaping among adolescents since 2018, show me the count and a sample, and give me the OQL.”
Scanned on every change, and again when our rules improve.
MuseSupported
Grok BotSupportedTell us and a person on the trust team will look at it. Or email [email protected].
Security scan
Passed
Safe to install in every agent it supports. Runs remotely on mcp.openalex.org · needs your sign-in.