OpenAlex MCP Server

An MCP (Model Context Protocol) server for accessing OpenAlex — a free, open index of 250M+ academic papers, 90M+ authors, and 100K+ institutions.

No paid subscription required. Free API key available for higher rate limits.

Tools

Tool	Description
search_works	Search papers by keyword with boolean operators and filters
search_authors	Search for researchers by name
get_author	Get detailed author profile (h-index, affiliations, topics)
get_author_works	Get publications by a specific author
find_similar_works	Semantic search — find conceptually related papers using AI embeddings
get_citations	Get papers that cite a specific work (forward citations)
get_references	Get papers cited by a specific work (bibliography)
search_institutions	Search for universities, labs, and research organizations
get_institution_works	Get research output from a specific institution

Setup

1. Get an API key (optional but recommended)

Get a free key at openalex.org/settings/api. Without a key you get 100 credits/day (testing only); with a free key you get 100,000 credits/day.

2. Add to Claude Desktop

Add this to your claude_desktop_config.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "openalex": {
      "command": "python3",
      "args": ["/path/to/openalex-mcp-server/server.py"],
      "env": {
        "OPENALEX_API_KEY": "your-api-key",
        "OPENALEX_EMAIL": "your.email@example.com"
      }
    }
  }
}

Or if using Claude Code CLI:

claude mcp add openalex \
  python3 \
  /path/to/openalex-mcp-server/server.py \
  -e OPENALEX_API_KEY=your-api-key \
  -e OPENALEX_EMAIL=your.email@example.com

Usage examples

• "Search OpenAlex for papers on curiosity in higher education from 2020-2024"
• "Find papers semantically similar to 'intrinsic motivation and student engagement'"
• "Look up the author profile for researcher A5023888391"
• "What papers cite DOI 10.1038/s41586-020-2649-2?"
• "Get recent publications from Northwestern University"

License

MIT